John Calvin Ferguson

John Calvin Ferguson (Chinese: 福開森; pinyin: Fú Kāisēn; 1866–1945) was an American scholar of Chinese art, collector and procurer for American art museums, and a Chinese governmental adviser.

Ferguson was the son of John Ferguson and Catherine Matilda Pomeroy (Ferguson). His father was a Methodist minister and his mother a schoolteacher. Ferguson attended Albert College in Ontario, Canada and then Boston University, where he graduated in 1886. He was ordained in the Methodist Episcopal Church and, in 1887, married Mary Elizabeth Wilson.

Their son Douglas Ferguson was a sculptor and political activist. A daughter, Mary, served in the administration of the Peking Union Medical College in the 1930s.

Ferguson and his new wife were posted to a Methodist mission in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, where he took up the serious study of the Chinese language, starting with classical texts, which he then translated into colloquial language to improve his speaking ability. A series of riots in 1891, the low mission salary, and raising five children put extreme stress on his wife.

In 1889, Ferguson used the living room of his house in Nanjing for classes; these grew into Huiwen Shuyuan, which in turn evolved into the University of Nanking. In 1897 he was offered a position by Sheng Xuanhuai, a pioneering industrialist and well-connected entrepreneur whom he had met by chance a few years earlier when they were both on a Yangtze river boat. Sheng was impressed by Ferguson's learned Chinese and courtly manner and invited him to found a second western-style school, the Nanyang Public School, Shanghai, a predecessor of Jiaotong University. In 1897, to facilitate faculty and students getting to and from the school, he built a road in the Shanghai French Concession with his own salary, which was later named Route Ferguson (now Wukang Road).

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