Robbing the Cradle

Buried together
in the Tomson Cemetery
Halifax, MA 

I just completed the Tomson branch of my family tree.  It takes me back to Francis Cooke of the Mayflower.  The Tomson family I find extremely interesting as well and will share more information in upcoming posts.  This story I found amazing.  I always heard the term "Robbing the Cradle", perhaps this is where it started.

The Tomson Cemetery is located about three miles from where I live.  I have been there but didn't have my camera with me.  I broke my first rule, "Always carry camera in car".  So now I need to visit once again to get the picture of their gravestones. Thomas Tompson and Mary Morton are my sixth great grandparents.

Thomas Tomson (also spelled Thomson and later Thompson) was a close acquaintance of John Morton who advised his friend, when the latter turned 25, that he should soon marry as he was of the proper age. Thomas is alleged to have replied, "I will marry that daughter of yours when she is old enough," pointing to John Morton's infant daughter Mary in her cradle.  John is not known to have objected, and when Thomas was 50, he made good his word, marrying Mary, aged 25. They married on December 13, 1715 in Middleboro, Massachusetts.

Thomas was a farmer and a glazier, and set diamond glass in lead, a feature of windows common in those days.

Thomas inherited 700 acres from his father, and he and Mary lived in the original house built by John Tomson following King Philip's War and the burning of the first Thomson home in Middleboro, Mass. They had seven children.

Sources: Ignatius Thompson, Genealogy of John Thompson (1841) and Charles Hutchinson Thompson, Genealogy and Descendants of John Thompson (Lansing, Michigan: 1890).