Thomas Rogers (abt. 1571 - 1621)

Born about 1571 in Watford, Northamptonshire, England

Ancestors

Husband of Alice (Cosford) Rogers — married 24 Oct 1597 (to 1621) in Watford, Northamptonshire, England

Descendants

Died 1621 at about age 50 in Plymouth Colony

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Thomas Rogers was a passenger on the Mayflower. Join: Mayflower Project Discuss: mayflower

Disambiguation

Sons: Joseph Rogers-12 and Thomas Rogers-16. The Thomas Rogers profiled here is often confused with Thomas Rogers of Watertown. Please check for the correct Rogers before attempting a merge.

Biography

Thomas Rogers was born at Watford, Northamptonshire, England by about 1571 (estimated from his marriage date). He was the son of William Rogers and Eleanor. He married Alice Cosford, daughter of George Cosford, in Watford, Northamptonshire on October 24, 1597.^[1] Several baptisms of their children are recorded at Watford, including a Thomas, who died in infancy and a Richard, possibly their child,^[2] who also died in infancy, and also Joseph, John, Elizabeth and Margaret.^[2]

Thomas left Northampton County, England, about 1616 and traveled to Holland. He settled with his family in Leiden, Holland, and on 25 June 1618 he became a citizen there, vouched for by William Jepson, formerly of Worksop, Notts., and by Roger Wilson, formerly of Sandwich, co. Kent, England. Thomas was a businessman and a merchant, not a pilgrim. Thomas Rogers was called a Camlet-merchant, a grade of wool cloth used for cloaks and petticoats. He knew many of the separatists in Holland and decided to go with them to America. On 1 April 1620 Thomas sold his Leiden house on the Barbarasteeg for 300 guilders, in preparation for the journey to New England.^[3][4]

His third (or second) and oldest surviving son Joseph came with him on the Mayflower trip.^[5] His wife Alice, two daughters Elizabeth and Margaret, and son John remained in Leiden. In the 1622 poll tax for Leyden, in the Over "t Hoff Quarter, in a house with other Pilgrim families in St. Peter's Churchyard west-side, were Jan Thomas, orphan from England without means; Elsgen Rogiers, widow of Thonis Rogiers, an Englishwoman; and Lysbeth and Grietgen her children, poor people. Translated this could read John, son of Thomas; Alice Rogers, widow of Thomas; and Elizabeth and Margaret, her children. At that period the word orphan meant that either or both parents were dead.^[6]

As passengers on the Mayflower, Thomas and son Joseph, sailed out of England on August 5, 1620 with 100 other passengers. They arrived November 11, 1620 at what would be called Cape Cod. They had been 66 days at sea.

Thomas was the 18th signer of the Mayflower Compact on Nov. 11, 1620, out of a total of 41 signers.^[7] The Compact served as the first form of government in the colony.

On Dec. 16, 1620, they came ashore at Plymouth after spending time to search for a suitable area. It had cleared land and fresh water. Construction of shelter started on Dec. 23rd. Two early fires in the colony destroyed several structures, which slowed progress.

Many original Mayflower passengers died that first winter. There were about 40 deaths, including Thomas Rogers. He died sometime between Dec. to Feb. 1620-1621 "in the first sickness"^[8] in the Plymouth Colony. He was about 49 years of age. Thomas was buried on Cole's Hill. Left behind without family was his son Joseph, age 18. He had to stay with other families.

In the 1623 Plymouth Colony land division, Joseph Rogers was allotted two acres--one for himself and one on behalf of his late father. He may have been living in the household of Governor Bradford with whom he was grouped on May 22, 1627, in the division of cattle. Joseph and twelve other inhabitants of Plymouth received "an heyfer of the last year which was of the Great white-back cow that was brought over in the Ann and two shee goats."^[9]

John Rogers is known to have come to America and married, but unfortunately the later whereabouts of Elizabeth and Margaret remain undocumented.^[10] The widow, the son John and the daughters do not appear in the land division of 1623 or the cattle division of 1627, so it is thought that they came to Plymouth Colony perhaps in 1629 or 1630 with the last of the Leiden group.^[11] Governor Bradford says in his history of the Plymouth settlement that on board the Mayflower were "Thomas Rogers and Joseph his son; his other children came afterwards......Thomas Rogers died in the first sickness but his son Joseph is still living (1650) and is married and hath six children. The rest of Thomas Rogers' [children] came over and are married and have many children." On the face of it this suggests that the entire Rogers family eventually arrived in the Plymouth colony, but at least more than one additional person came after 1620. We know that his son John came to Plymouth about 1630. Although many other male Rogers immigrants have been claimed as sons of Thomas the Pilgrim, none of the claims has been proved and some have been disproved. Therefore it seems likely that at least one of the Rogers daughters who were living in Holland in 1622 came over. John and Joseph Rogers each named a daughter Elizabeth, perhaps thereby indicating that their sister Elizabeth lived in New England. Unfortunately extensive research has failed to uncover any further evidence. Some traditional genealogies identify Elizabeth with the Elizabeth who married Robert Rodway July 1635 in Watford, England, and suppose that she returned to England rather than coming to America with the rest of her family. Other genealogies suppose her to have married Samuel Eddy in Massachusetts.

John Rogers came to Plymouth about 1630, when the last of the Leiden contingent arrived and was in Plymouth Colony on March 25, 1633 when he was taxed 9 shillings. The proof of his identity lies in a grant made April 6, 1640 to "Joseph Rogers and John Rogers his brother...fifty acres apeece of upland....at the North River."^[12] Both then had growing families to carry forward the Rogers heritage, although only Joseph's descendants would carry forward the Rogers name beyond the fourth generation.

It was Thomas Rogers' descendants who helped build the new colony.

Further information on the Rogers family and their English background is in "The English Ancestry of the Pilgrim Thomas Rogers and his wife Alice (Cosford) Rogers", by Clifford Stott, The Genealogist, Vol. 10, No. 2, 1989. (On line at: Thomas Rogers Society website (link via Wayback Machine at Archive.org)

Children of Thomas Rogers and Alice Cosford

All baptized at Watford, Northamptonshire:^[2]

1. Thomas Rogers bpt. 24 Mar 1598/99; bur 27 May 1599
2. Possibly Richard Rogers bpt 12 Mar 1599; bur, 4 April 1600
3. Joseph Rogers bpt. 23 Jan 1602/3, m. by 1633 Hannah _______
4. John Rogers bpt. 6 Apr 1606, m Anna Churchman
5. Elizabeth Roges bpt 26 Dec 1609; living at Leiden in 1622; perhaps later came to New England
6. Margaret Rogers bpt. 30 May 1613; living at Leiden in 1622; perhaps later came to New England

DNA

The MayflowerDNA.org confirms Thomas Rogers' Y-DNA haplogroup is R-FGC59523.^[13]

Y-DNA chromosome haplogroup inferred from two descendants through his grandson, Eleazor Rogers: R-FGC 59531.^[13]

Y-DNA chromosome haplogroup inferred from three descendants through his grandson, John Rogers: R-FT260099. (FTDNA kit #83654 and FTDNA kit #338777.)^[14]

Sources

1. ↑ The Genealogist: English Ancestry of the Pilgrim Thomas Rogers and His Wife Alice (Cosford) Rogers, Volume: 10, No. 2, by Clifford L Stott (1989) pp. 139-149, reprint by Thomas Rogers Society.
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2} Robert Charles Anderson, The Pilgrim Migration: Immigrants to Plymouth Colony 1620-1633 Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2004) p. 396, 397
3. ↑ Dexter, Henry Martyn and Dexter, Morton. The England and Holland of the Pilgrims Boston, New York, Houghton, Mifflin and company, 1905 pp 272, 273, p. 632
4. ↑ Clifford L. Stott, "English Ancestry of the Pilgrim Thomas Rogers and His Wife Alice (Cosford) Rogers", The Genealogist 10, No. 2, (1989). Link via Wayback Machine archive date 04 July 2022)
5. ↑ William Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation, Now first printed from the original manuscript for The Massachusetts Historical Society, (Boston: LIttle, Brown, and Company, 1856) Apendix, No. I. Passengers of the Mayflower. p. 449. "2. Thomas Rogers, and Joseph, his sone. His other children came afterwards." and p. 453, "6. Thomas Rogers dyed in the first sickness, but his sone Joseph is still living, and is married, and hath 5. children. The rest of Thomas Rogers [children] came over, & are maried, & have many children."
6. ↑ TAG 52:110-13; NEHGR 154:432-33. Cited in: Robert Charles Anderson, The Pilgrim Migration: Immigrants to Plymouth Colony 1620-1633 Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2004) p. 397.
7. ↑ Morton, Nathaniel. New England's memorial. (Boston: Congregational board of publication, 1855) Originally published 1669.p. 26 Note: The original compact is gone. Morton furnished the earliest known list 1669 facsimile
8. ↑ Mayflower Families Through Five Generations, Volume Nineteen: Thomas Rogers, Ann T. Reeves, Volume: 19, Alice W.A. Westgate (General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 2000) d. Plymouth in the winter of 1620/21 "in the first sickness"; p. 1
9. ↑ Pulsifer, David (ed.). Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England : printed by order of the legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Vol. 12 Deeds, &c. Vol. 1 1620-1651 & Book of Indian Records for their lands (New York: AMS Press, 1968) p. 4, p. 12
10. ↑ The American Genealogist 52:110-13; New England Historical and Genealogical Register 154:432-33.
11. ↑ Bradford 442, 446 "Thomas Rogers died in the first sickness but his son Joseph is still living and is married and hath six children. The rest of Thomas Rogers's came over and are married and have many children."
12. ↑ Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England : printed by order of the legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Vol. 1 Court Orders 1633-1640 (Boston: Press of William White, 1855) p. 144
13. ↑ ^{13.0 13.1} MayflowerDNA.org. "Rogers (Y-DNA)." (https://mayflowerdna.org/wiki/index.php/Rogers_(Y-DNA) accessed: 6 Nov. 2023).
14. ↑ Family TreeDNA. Mayflower DNA Project - Y-DNA Colorized Chart.

See also:

• Wikipedia article on Thomas Rogers:
• New Englanders in the 1600s: A Guide to Genealogical Research Published Between 1980 and 2005, by Martin E. Hollick (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2006) ROGERS, THOMAS, Mayflower Passenger, v. ca. 1571, d. Plymouth, Mass., winter 1620/1. English origins of him and his wife at TG [The Genealogist] 9:138-49; MF19 [Alice W.A. Westgate, compiler, Ann T. Reeves, revisor, Mayflower Families Through Five Generations: Thomas Rogers (Plymouth, MA: General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 2000).], five generations all lines; GMB [Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633 (Boston, MA: NEHGS, 1995)] III:1597-99; PM [Robert Charles Anderson, The Pilgrim Migration: Immigration to Plymouth Colony 1620-1633 (Boston, MA: New England Historic Geneological Society, 2004)], pp. 396-97; Croll [Robert Croll Stevens, Ancestry of the Children of Robert Croll Stevens and Jane Eleanor (Knauss) Stevens, Volume II: The Genealogy of John Christian Croll 1707-1758 (Pittsford, NY: Tucker Printers, Inc. 1985], 140; EB [Edmund K. Swigart, Ph.D., An Emerson-Benson Saga: The Ancestry of Charles F. Emerson and Bessie Benson and the Struggle to Settle the United States Including 194 Allied Lines (Baltimore, MD: Gateway Press, 1994)], pp. 484-92; Brewer [Dorothy Brewer Erikson, Descendants of Thomas Brewer Connecticut to Main 1682-1996 with Allied Families (Boston, MA: NEHGS, 1996], pp. 479-80; JPG [Joan S. Guilford, The Ancestry of Dr. J.P. Guilford, Volume I: Seventeenth-Century New England Colonials and a Few Eighteenth-Century Immigrants (Orange, CA, 2003)] I:694-701.
• "Kindred spirits: a New World history of the families of Henry Wickoff Rogers & Grace Dean McLeod", Thomas married Alice Cosford Oct 24 1597 in Waterford, Northampton, England, daughter of George Cosford.
• Karl Robert Jonas. "Rogers family to Jonas family, 1510-2010", (Gateway Press, 2006) At about age 26, Thomas married a local girl named Alice Cosford on the 24th of October 1597. Alice had been baptized on the 10th of May 1573 and was the daughter of another local farmer and his wife, George and Margaret (possibly Wills) Cosford
• Village of Watford "The story of Thomas Rogers of Watford (1572-1621)" (Link via Wayback Machine at Archive.org, capture date 02 Apr 2016).
• Thomas Rogers Society
• Bradford, William, 1590-1657. Of Plimoth Plantation: manuscript, 1630-1650. State Library of Massachusetts "List of Mayflower Passengers." In Bradford's Hand.

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