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Clan MacThomas

KNOW THYSELF


Clan MacThomas are a Highland clan, originating from Perthshire. The name comes from the clan's progenitor - a Scottish Gaelic speaker named Thomas, who was known as "Tomaidh Mor". A grandson of a Chattan Confederation chief, he felt the Confederation had become unmanagable and re-settled with his clan in Glen Shee.

The MacThomas clan motto is "Deo Juvante Invidiam Superabo" (With God's help I will rise above envy) and the clan crest is a wildcat holding a snake.

Scottish History

of Clan MacThomas


The sons of Thomas

One of the most common surnames in the United Kingdom, ‘Thomson’ is the commonest form of spelling found in Scotland, while ‘Thompson’ is prevalent in the north of England and ‘Thomas’ in Wales.

It is a name that does not have any single point of origin, and numerous variants are found throughout Europe and North America, including Thom, Thomsoun, Thomason, and Thomsen.

A family of Thomsons, or ‘sons of Thom, or Tom’, is known to have possessed the estate of what is now the present day Edinburgh suburb of Duddingston for several centuries until it was sold at the close of the seventeenth century, while a family of Thomsons who boasted their own heraldic arms and motto of ‘Truth will prevail’ held what is now the Edinburgh suburb of Corstorphine.

One of the earliest recorded Thomsons in Scotland is a John Thomson of Ayrshire, and it is this Thomson who is the first of the name to enter the nation’s turbulent historical record.

Ayrshire was one of the main recruiting grounds for the cause of the great freedom fighter William Wallace and the warrior king Robert the Bruce.

Both heroes had strong family connections with the area, and many of the common folk who hailed from there fought and died in the many campaigns waged over its soil to oust the occupying English garrisons.

Many of these Ayrshire folk were also part of the army that fought beside Bruce at the decisive battle of Bannockburn in 1314, when a highly disciplined and motivated band of Scottish patriots inflicted an overwhelming defeat on the cream of English chivalry.

Little is known of ‘John Thomson of Ayr’. But it is reasonable to assume that he fought at Bannockburn with such skill that it was for this reason that Bruce’s brother, Edward, selected Thomson to accompany him on his invasion of Ireland.

That John Thomson was no mere foot soldier in the ranks of Edward Bruce’s army is borne out by the fact that he was personally selected by his commander to lead part of the Scottish contingent that sailed from Ayr in May of 1315 in a fleet of 300 galleys.

Landing on the coast of Antrim, Edward quickly rallied fellow Celtic support in his daring bid to defeat the occupying Anglo-Irish forces that owed allegiance to Edward II of England.

Edward Bruce was recognised as king of Ireland by the anti-English Gaels of Ireland, and a series of stunning victories ensued over the first initial months of the campaign, including the capture of both Carrickfergus and Dundalk.

The Anglo-Irish forces rallied, however, and the next three years were marked with a bloody series of advances and reversals for Bruce until, in 1318, he was killed in a battle fought at Fochart, near Dundalk.

Some sources assert his defeat was caused by his headstrong and impetuous refusal to wait for the arrival of reinforcements before engaging in battle.

The fate of John Thomson is unclear, but it is likely that as leader of one of the Scottish contingents he died in the thick of the fierce battle, along with Edward Bruce.

It is to be hoped his body did not suffer the same gruesome fate as Edward’s, which was cut up into four quarters and sent to the four main quarters of the island he had invaded three years earlier.

While John Thomson was furthering the cause of the Bruces in attempting to forge a pan-Celtic alliance against the English, other ‘Thomsons’ were also deeply embedded in Scotland’s own Gaelic tradition.

Gaelic equivalents of Thomson are found in MacTavish (‘son of Tammas’), McCombie (‘son of Tommy’), and MacThomas (or MacComish, meaning ‘son of Thomas’), while MacLehose stems from ‘Mac gille Thoismis’, meaning ‘son of St. Thomas.’

An often heated debate that still rages at the present day concerns with which particular clans ‘the Thomsons’ can claim an affinity, or kinship.

Untangling the highly complex genealo-gical web, however, it is possible to identify close ‘Thomson’ links with Clan MacThomas, Clan MacTavish, Clan Campbell of Argyll, and, through Clan Mackintosh, the great confederation of clans known as Clan Chattan.

All these clans figure greatly in Scotland’s colourful and often bloody saga, and Thomsons of today who can trace an ancestry back to them can rightly share in their proud traditions and rich heritage.

A gathering of clans

A small wooded knoll marks all that remains of the MacThomson lands in Glenshee. Situated about four miles south of the Spitall of Glenshee and off the Blairgowrie to Braemar road, it survives today as the traditional Gathering Place of the clan.

The history of the MacThomases is inextricably linked with that of the Mackintoshes, who were the predominant clan in the great Clan Chattan confederation.

This mighty confederation also included MacPhersons, Farquharsons, McBains, MacLeans, McGillivrays, and Davidsons.

‘Touch not the cat without a glove’ is the Clan Chattan motto, while a rampant wildcat is the crest of this clan that flourished for centuries in the Badenoch region of the Spey Valley.

Adam MacWilliam of Garvamore, recognised as the Mackintosh ancestor of Clan MacThomas, was a son of the 7th Chief of Clan Mackintosh.

A descendant of his, known as MacThomaidh (‘Big Tommy’), is thought to have taken his followers from Badenoch into Glenshee, in Perthshire, and by the middle of the sixteenth century a MacThomas clan chief had been confirmed in the lands of Finegand.

A Clan MacThomas ‘in Gleneschie’ (Glenshee) is listed in the Roll of Clans in both 1587 and 1594, but their fortunes rapidly declined following their support of the Marquis of Montrose and, later, their collaboration with the Cromwellian occupation of Scotland.

A bitter civil war raged in Scotland between 1638 and 1649 between the forces of those Presbyterian Scots who had signed a National Covenant that opposed the divine right of the Stuart monarchy and Royalists such as James Graham, 1st Marquis of Montrose, whose prime allegiance was to Charles I.

Although Montrose had initially supported the Covenant, his conscience later forced him to switch sides, and the MacThomases supported him during his great campaigns from 1644 to 1645, a year that became known as the Year of Miracles because of his brilliant military successes.

These campaigns included the Battle of Inverlochy, fought and won by Montrose in February of 1645 after he and his hardy band of followers, that included MacThomases, had endured a gruelling 36-hour march south through knee-deep snow from the area of the present day Fort Augustus to Inverlochy.

The forces of the Presbyterian Earl of Argyll were wiped out in a surprise attack and the earl himself forced to flee.

The MacThomases also shared in Montrose’s great victory at Kilsyth on August 15, 1645, but also shared in his final defeat at Philiphaugh, near Selkirk, less than a month later.

Charles I met his grim end on the executioner’s block in January of 1649, and it was just over a year later, in June of 1650, that Oliver Cromwell, as Lord General of the Commonwealth Forces of England, crossed the Tweed into Scotland at the head of a 16,000-strong force of seasoned cavalry and deadly artillery.

He entered a war-ravaged nation that was bitterly divided along religious and political lines.

Charles II would later be crowned king at Scone, but only because he had, reluctantly, agreed to sign both the National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant, the sentiments of which were so precious to Scotland’s dominant and fanatical Presbyterian faction.

The Scots army was routed by Cromwell at the Battle of Dunbar on September 3, 1650, with up to 3,000 Scots killed and nearly 10,000 taken prisoner, with the remainder, commanded by General David Leslie, fleeing north to Perth.

A victorious Cromwell entered Edinburgh on September 7, marking the beginning of the long occupation of Scotland by his troops.

The occupation brought much needed stability to a Scotland that had been torn apart by civil war, and it was in recognition of this that clan chiefs such as the Chief of Clan MacThomas collaborated with Cromwell, seeing this as serving not only their own interests but the interests of the nation as a whole.

The MacThomases paid dearly for their co-operation with Cromwell’s republican regime, when in 1660, following the restoration of Charles II to the throne, they fell out of favour.

Clans that had remained faithful to the royal cause were duly rewarded, often at the expense of clans such as the MacThomases.

Their fortunes rapidly declined, and displaced MacThomas clansmen moved from their ancient ancestral homelands to settle in the Lowlands, in many cases reluctantly changing their name to Thomson or Thomas to disassociate them from a name that was viewed with suspicion by the authorities.

A Clan MacThomas Society flourishes today and takes as its motto ‘With God’s help, I will overcome envy’, while its crest is a rampant wildcat clutching a serpent.

Thomsons can also claim kinship with the proud clan of MacTavish (‘son of Tammas’) who along with other clans thrived in the vast territory of Argyll, which was dominated for centuries by the Campbells.

This connection with the Campbells explains how some sources assert that the Thomsons are actually a sept of the Campbells of Argyll. The Campbells of Argyll, who claim descent from early Irish kings, have, as their motto ‘Forget not’, while their crest is a boar’s head.

The MacTavish crest also features a boar’s head, and the motto of this clan that adhered to the Jacobite cause is ‘Do not forget me after death.’

A contentious issue in recent years is whether or not Clan MacTavish can claim all Thomsons or Thompsons as clansmen.

Any Thomsons or Thompsons, however, who can trace an ancestry back to the MacTavish lands of Dunardary, near the western end of the Crinan canal in Argyll, or the areas of Kilberry, Knapdale, and Kilmichael Glassary, may well in all probability be descendants of the original ‘sons of Tammas’ of Argyll.

A mystery surrounds a faded parchment still held today by the office of the Lord Lyon King of Arms of Scotland and known as Workman’s Manuscript.

Dated to 1665-66, the document attributes arms to an unnamed ‘Thomson of that Ilk’, while over the centuries arms have been granted as ‘indeterminate cadets’, or branches of the ‘honoured community’ of Thomsons, to Thomsons who have petitioned the Lord Lyon.

Further complicating the tangled genealogical strands, bearers of the name Thomason have links with Clan MacFarlane, and are thought to descend from Thomas, the son of a late fourteenth and early fifteenth century MacFarlane chief.

During the bloody early seventeenth century campaign by James VI to bring much needed law and order to the Highlands and Islands, the MacFarlanes were among some of the particularly unruly clans that suffered the dire penalty of being proscribed and having their lands, between Arrochar on Loch Long and Tarbet on Loch Lomond, forfeited. The clan had also held lands around Loch Sloy.

Forced to move to other parts of Scotland, many MacFarlanes had no option but to change their name, in many cases to Thomason.

The MacFarlane motto is “This I’ll defend”, while the crest is a demi-savage brandishing a broadsword pointing to an imperial crown.

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Family History Mini Book


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English History

of Clan MacThomas


Ancient roots

A surname that stems from the popular forename ‘Thomas’ or the earlier ‘Thom’, ‘Thompson’ indicates ‘son of Thomas’ or ‘son of Thom.’

Of Middle Eastern roots, the given name of Thomas originally indicated ‘twin.’

Ranked at 15th in some lists of the 100 most common surnames found in England today, bearers of its spelling variant of ‘Thomson’, ranked at 81st, have their own proud history and traditions.

With Thompson being a name first popularised throughout England by the Anglo-Saxons, this means that flowing through the veins of many of its bearers today is the blood of those Germanic tribes who invaded and settled in the south and east of the island of Britain from about the early fifth century.

Known as the Anglo-Saxons, they were composed of the Jutes, from the area of the Jutland Peninsula in modern Denmark, the Saxons from Lower Saxony, in modern Germany and the Angles from the Angeln area of Germany.

It was the Angles who gave the name ‘Engla land’, or ‘Aengla land’ – better known as ‘England.’

They held sway in what became England from approximately 550 to 1066, with the main kingdoms those of Sussex, Wessex, Northumbria, Mercia, Kent, East Anglia and Essex.

Whoever controlled the most powerful of these kingdoms was tacitly recognised as overall ‘king’ – one of the most noted being Alfred the Great, King of Wessex from 871 to 899.

It was during his reign that the famous Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was compiled – an invaluable source of Anglo-Saxon history – while Alfred was designated in early documents as Rex Anglorum Saxonum, King of the English Saxons. Other important Anglo-Saxon works include the epic Beowulf and the seventh century Caedmon’s Hymn.

The Anglo-Saxons meanwhile, had usurped the power of the indigenous Britons – who referred to them as ‘Saeson’ or ‘Saxones.’

It is from this that the Scottish Gaelic term for ‘English people’ of ‘Sasannach’ derives, the Irish Gaelic ‘Sasanach’ and the Welsh ‘Saeson.’

We learn from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle how the religion of the early Anglo-Saxons, including those who would later adopt the Thompson name, was one that pre-dated the establishment of Christianity in the British Isles. Known as a form of Germanic paganism, with roots in Old Norse religion, it shared much in common with the Druidic ‘nature-worshipping’ religion of the indigenous Britons.

It was in the closing years of the sixth century that Christianity began to take a hold in Britain, while by approximately 690 it had become the ‘established’ religion of Anglo-Saxon England.

The death knell of Anglo-Saxon supremacy was sounded in the wake of the Norman Conquest of 1066 – a key event in English history.

By this date, England had become a nation with several powerful competitors to the throne and in what were extremely complex family, political and military machinations, the monarch was Harold II, who had succeeded to the throne following the death of Edward the Confessor.

But his right to the throne was contested by two powerful competitors – his brother-in-law King Harold Hardrada of Norway, in alliance with Tostig, Harold II’s brother, and Duke William II of Normandy.

In what has become known as The Year of Three Battles, Hardrada invaded England and gained victory over the English king on September 20 at the battle of Fulford, in Yorkshire.

Five days later, however, Harold II decisively defeated his brother-in-law and brother at the battle of Stamford Bridge. But he had little time to celebrate his victory, having to immediately march south from Yorkshire to encounter a mighty invasion force, led by Duke William of Normandy, that had landed at Hastings, in East Sussex.

Harold’s battle-hardened but exhausted force confronted the Normans on October 14 in a battle subsequently depicted on the Bayeux tapestry – a 23ft. long strip of embroidered linen thought to have been commissioned eleven years after the event by the Norman Odo of Bayeux.

It was at the top of Senlac Hill that Harold drew up a strong defensive position, building a shield wall to repel Duke William’s cavalry and infantry.

The Normans suffered heavy losses, but through a combination of the deadly skill of their archers and the ferocious determination of their cavalry they eventually won the day.

Anglo-Saxon morale had collapsed on the battlefield as word spread through the ranks that Harold had been killed – the Bayeux Tapestry depicting this as having happened when the English king was struck by an arrow to the head.

Amidst the carnage of the battlefield, it was difficult to identify him – the last of the Anglo-Saxon kings. Some sources assert William ordered his body to be thrown into the sea, while others state it was secretly buried at Waltham Abbey.

What is known with certainty, however, is that William in celebration of his great victory founded Battle Abbey, near the site of the battle, ordering that the altar be sited on the spot where Harold was believed to have fallen.

William was declared King of England on December 25 and the subjugation of his Anglo-Saxon subjects such as the Thompsons followed.

Within an astonishingly short space of time, Norman manners, customs and law were imposed on England – laying the basis for what subsequently became established ‘English’ custom and practice.

But Anglo-Saxon culture was not totally eradicated, with some aspects absorbed into that of the Normans, while faint echoes of its proud and colourful past is still seen today in the form of popular surnames such as Thompson.

The name is first found in what for centuries was the north-western English territory of Cumberland – which since local government reorganisation in 1974 now forms, along with Westmoreland and parts of northern Lancashire, the administrative region of Cumbria.

It was in Cumberland, original heartland of bearers of the Thompson name, that for centuries they lived an often precarious and violent existence.

The name of Cumberland first appears in 945 A.D. with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recording that this was when the area was ceded to Scotland’s Malcolm I by England’s King Edmund.

Carlisle, that in its own right formed an important part of Cumberland, was invaded by England’s William Rufus in 1092 and, constantly battled over in a series of bloody conflicts, was again regained by Scotland under David I; its blood-stained soil was then recaptured for England in 1157 under Henry II.

Living in close and hostile proximity to Scotland, bearers of the Thompson name were for centuries engaged in vicious Border warfare.

Known on both sides of the border as ‘reivers’, the Thompsons and others took this name from their lawless custom of ‘reiving’, or raiding, not only their neighbours’ livestock, but also that of their neighbours across the border.

The word ‘bereaved’, for example, indicating to have suffered loss, derives from the original ‘reived’, meaning to have suffered loss of property.

A constant thorn in the flesh of both the English and Scottish authorities was the cross-border raiding and pillaging carried out by well-mounted and heavily armed men, the contingent from the Scottish side of the border known and feared as ‘moss troopers.’

In an attempt to bring order to what was known as the wild ‘debateable land’ on both sides of the border, in 1237 Alexander II of Scotland signed the Treaty of York, which for the first time established the Scottish border with England as a line running from the Solway to the Tweed.

On either side of the border there were three ‘marches’ or areas of administration, the West, East, and Middle Marches, and a warden governed these.

Complaints from either side of the border were dealt with on Truce Days, when the wardens of the different marches would act as arbitrators – while there was also a law known as the Hot Trod, that granted anyone who had their livestock stolen the right to pursue the thieves and recover their property.

Science and adventure

In rather more peaceful times, bearers of the Thompson name feature prominently in the historical record – particularly as pioneering scientists and adventurers.

A Fellow of the prestigious scientific ‘think-tank’ known as the Royal Society and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Thomas Thompson was the Scottish chemist and mineralogist who in 1817 gave the name to the chemical element ‘silicon.’

Born in 1773 in Crieff, Perthshire, and after having studied classics, mathematics and natural philosophy at St Andrews University and then graduating with a degree in medicine from Edinburgh University, he went on to publish a number of important works.

These include his 1802 Survey of Chemistry and the 1810 The Elements of Chemistry.

Latterly Professor of Chemistry at Glasgow University and an early researcher into atomic theory, he died in 1852.

Born in Edinburgh in 1860, Sir D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson was the biologist who because of his landmark 1917 On Growth and Form, was awarded twelve years after his death in 1948 a Nobel Laureate in Medicine for “the finest work of literature in all the annals of science that have been recorded by the English tongue.”

The book is famed for having defined ‘morphogenesis – the complex process by which distinctive patterns are formed in both plants and animals.

A graduate of both Edinburgh University and Cambridge University and a Fellow of the Royal Society, he was also the recipient of many other scientific honours that include the Darwin Medal and the Daniel Giruad Elliot Medal from America’s National Academy of Sciences.

Not only a pioneering physicist but also a noted inventor, Sir Benjamin Thompson, also known as Count Rumford, was born in 1753 in Woburn, Massachusetts, to British immigrants to America.

Best known for theories that revolutionised the understanding of thermodynamics, he was the author of the important 1798 An Experimental Enquiry Concerning the Source of Heat which is Excited by Friction, while his second wife was Marie-Anne Lavoisier, widow of the famous French chemist Antoine Lavoisier.

Receiving a knighthood in the Peerage of the United Kingdom in 1784 after having served as a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Loyalist forces during the American Revolutionary War of 1775 to 1783, he later moved to Bavaria to continue his scientific studies.

It was here that he was honoured as a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, taking the title of Reichsgraf von Rumford – Baron Rumford – with ‘Rumford’ the name of the town in America’s New Hampshire where he had married his first wife, Sarah Rolfe.

A prolific inventor, before his death in 1814 he devised not only a forerunner of today’s coffee percolator, but also improvements to household chimneys and industrial furnaces.

The Moon crater Rumford is named in his honour, while in his lifetime he endowed the Rumford Medals of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Royal Society, in addition to endowing a professorship at Harvard University.

He was the father, through his first marriage, of Sarah Thompson, Countess Rumford, born in 1774 in New Hampshire.

It was after her father’s death that, inheriting the title of Countess Rumford, she became the first American to be known as a countess; a philanthropist who spent her time in homes she owned not only in her native New Hampshire but also in Paris and London, she died in 1852.

In the world of contemporary science, Kenneth Lane Thompson, born in New Orleans in 1943, is the leading American computer scientist better known as Ken Thompson.

It was while working for Bell Labs that in 1969 he designed and implemented the famous UNIX operating system, while he also invented the B programming computer language; the recipient of a number of awards that include the Turing Award and America’s National Medal of Technology, he has worked since 2006 with the Internet research engine company Google.

Recognised as having been “the greatest land geographer who ever lived”, David Thompson was the British-Canadian fur trader, surveyor and map-maker born in Westminster, London, in 1770.

His father died when he was aged two and, because of his family’s subsequent financial hardship, he and his brother were placed in a school for the disadvantaged.

This was to prove of great benefit to him, for it was here that he honed the mathematical skills that formed the basis for his future career as a surveyor and map-maker.

Apprenticed to the Hudson’s Bay Company in North America, he spent some time in Manitoba where he studied surveying under the guidance of the company’s leading surveyor Philip Turnor.

Having completed his apprenticeship when he was aged 20, he was then employed by them as a fur trader.

But, also utilising his impressive surveying and map-making skills, he completed a survey in 1792 that mapped a route to Lake Athabasca, on the border of what is now Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Leaving the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1797 and joining its rival the North West Company, he went on to map much of the interior of what later would become known as Canada.

Known to native peoples he met on his surveying and map-making expeditions as “Koo-Koo-Sint” – “Stargazer” – it is estimated that before his death in 1857 he had mapped a North American land mass amounting to nearly four million square kilometres.

Despite his achievements, he died in relative obscurity, and it was not until 1916 that his field notebooks were collated and published by J.B. Tyrell as David Thompson’s Narrative.

Honoured by the Canadian Government in 1957 with his image on a postage stamp, the David Thompson Highway in Alberta is also named in his honour.

Yet another intrepid traveller, this time on the high seas, was the rather oddly named John Sen Inches Thompson, the Scottish ship owner, sea captain, whaler and author born in 1845 in Alloa, Clackmannan.

It was after his marriage to Margaret Inches, of Blairgowrie, Perthshire, that he added her surname to his own name.

He is best known for a voyage he took in 1877, aboard the Bencleugh, when he and his crew were shipwrecked after a violent gale off Macquarie Island, Tasmania.

Leading a perilous existence on the island and on the brink of starvation, it was four long months later that they were eventually rescued by the Bencleugh’s sister ship, Friendship.

His book, Voyages and Wanderings in Far Off Lands, was published just over 20 years before his death in 1933.

Two infamous bearers of the Thompson name were the American Old West gambler, gunman and lawman Ben Thompson and his younger brother Billy, also known as “Texas Billy.”

Born in 1843 in Knottingley, West Yorkshire Ben and his brother, born in 1845, immigrated with their parents to America in 1852, eventually settling in Austin, Texas.

Working for a time as a printer’s assistant on an Austin newspaper, Ben Thompson eventually turned to gambling as a career, travelling throughout the length and breadth of the Unites States from one gambling den and saloon to another.

Enlisting during the American Civil War of 1861 to 1865 in the 2nd Regiment, Texas Mounted Rifles, of the Confederate States Army, along with his brother, it was shortly after the conflict began that the volatile Ben shot two men in a row over rations.

In 1868, after shooting his brother-in-law over a family feud, he spent some time in prison before being pardoned.

By 1871, he had opened the Bull’s Head saloon in Abilene, Kansas and it was here that he made the acquaintance of other legendary Old West characters who included John Wesley Hardin, Marshall “Wild Bill” Hickok, “Buffalo Bill” Cody and Bat Masterton.

Later re-locating to Austin, Texas, and despite his reputation as a gunman – or perhaps because of it – he was appointed town marshal.

He was killed, in a hail of bullets, after becoming embroiled in a feud in a theatre in San Antonio in 1884; his equally volatile brother Billy died in 1897.

In the world of politics, Sir John Thompson, born in 1845 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, was the lawyer, judge, university professor and politician who served as 4th Prime Minister of Canada from 1892 until his death in office two years later.

Born in 1961, David Thompson served as 6th Prime Minister of Barbados from 2008 until his death in 2010.

A leading British historian and peace campaigner, Edward Palmer Thompson, better known as E.P. Thompson, was born in 1924 and is best known for his renowned 1963 book The Making of the English Working Class.

A prominent member of the Communist Party of Great Britain until he left it in 1956 following the Soviet invasion of Hungary, he nevertheless remained a noted Marxist historian.

Also a member and campaigner for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), and the author of a number of biographies and a collection of poetry, he died in 1993.

Through his marriage to fellow historian and peace activist Dorothy Towers, he was the father of the award-winning British writer of children’s novels Kate Thompson.

Born in 1956 in Halifax, Yorkshire, her 2005 The New Policemen won both the Whitbread Children’s Book Award and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize.

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Family History Mini Book


We hope you enjoyed reading this excerpt from this mini book on the English history of the MacThomas family.

You can buy the full book for only
$5.08

Welsh History

of Clan MacThomas


Invasion and conquest

Of truly Biblical roots, ‘Thomas’ derives from an ancient Aramaic word meaning ‘twin’, and as a forename it was popularised through reverence for the apostle Thomas, known as ‘doubting Thomas’, because he at first doubted the truth of Christ’s resurrection.

Finally convinced, he went on to fervently preach Christ’s message throughout the Middle East and even much further afield – and is believed to have been martyred in India.

The name was also popularised in the Christian tradition through reverence for the twelfth century Archbishop of Canterbury and martyr St Thomas Becket, and for the thirteenth century Italian theologian St Thomas Aquinas, while as a surname it indicates ‘son of Thomas.’

In Wales, the early heartland of those who would come to bear the Thomas name was the ancient kingdom of Brycheiniog – now modern-day Breconshire.

One of the nation’s thirteen historic counties it is also known as Brecknockshire, County of Brecon, County of Brecknock and, in Welsh, as Sir Frycheiniog – with ‘Sir’ denoting ‘County’.

The first serious threat to the kingdom’s independence came in the sixth century in the form of the Anglo-Saxons – those Germanic tribes who invaded and settled in the south and east of the island of Britain from about the early fifth century.

Composed of the Jutes, from the area of the Jutland Peninsula in modern Denmark, the Saxons from Lower Saxony and the Angles from the Angeln area of Germany, it was the latter who gave the name ‘Engla land’, or ‘Aengla land’ – better known as ‘England.’

The Anglo-Saxons meanwhile, had usurped the power of the indigenous Britons, who referred to them as ‘Saeson’ or ‘Saxones’ – and it is from this that the Welsh term for English people of ‘Saeson’ derives, the Scottish-Gaelic ‘Sasannach’ and the Irish-Gaelic ‘Sasanach.’

We learn from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle how the religion of the early Anglo-Saxons was one that pre-dated the establishment of Christianity in the British Isles by about 690 A.D.

But, as a form of Germanic paganism with roots in Old Norse religion, it shared much in common with the Druidic ‘nature-worshipping’ religion of the indigenous Britons such as the Welsh.

The death knell of Anglo-Saxon supremacy was sounded with the Norman Conquest of 1066 when Harold II was defeated at the battle of Hastings, in East Sussex, by a mighty invasion force led by Duke William II of Normandy.

William was declared King of England on December 25, and the complete subjugation of his Anglo-Saxon subjects followed, with those Normans who had fought on his behalf rewarded with lands – a pattern that would be followed in Wales.

Invading across the Welsh Marches, the borderland between England and Wales, the Normans gradually consolidated their gains – with ancient Welsh kingdoms such as the early Thomas heartland of Brycheiniog being taken over by them as ‘Lordships’.

Under a succession of Welsh leaders who included Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, known as Llywelyn the Last, resistance proved strong.

But Llwelyn’s resistance was brutally crushed in 1283 under England’s ruthless and ambitious Edward I, who ordered the building or repair of at least 17 castles and in 1302 proclaimed his son and heir, the future Edward II, as Prince of Wales, a title known in Welsh as Tywysog Cymru.

Another heroic Welsh figure dominated the resistance movement from 1400 to 1415 in the form of Owain Glyndŵr – the last native Welshman to be recognised by his supporters as Tywysog Cymru, and it is from this charismatic freedom fighter that some bearers of the Thomas name today claim a proud descent.

In what is known as The Welsh Revolt he achieved an early series of stunning victories against Henry IV and his successor Henry V – until mysteriously disappearing from the historical record after mounting an ambush in Brecon.

Some sources assert that he was either killed in the ambush or died a short time afterwards from wounds he received – but there is a persistent tradition that he survived and lived thereafter in anonymity, protected by loyal followers.

During the revolt, he had consistently refused offers of a Royal Pardon and – despite offers of hefty rewards for his capture – he was never betrayed.

One noted fifteenth century bearer of the Thomas name was William ap Thomas, an ancestor of the Earls of Pembroke through his son William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke.

Responsible for expanding the forbidding edifice that is Raglan Castle, in Monmouthshire, he fought on many campaigns on behalf of the English Crown, most notably beside Henry V at the battle of Agincourt in October of 1415, during The Hundred Years War, when a great victory was achieved over the French.

Knighted in 1426 by Henry’s successor, Henry VI, and known in Welsh as Y Marchog Glas o Went – The Blue Knight of Gwent – because of the colour of his armour, his second wife was the heiress Gwladys ferch Dafydd, described poetically as ‘The Star of Abergavenny’ because of her beauty.

William ap Thomas died in 1445 and Gwladys in 1454 and both were buried in Abergavenny Priory, of which they were patrons.

It was their son William, born in 1423 and who died in 1469, who was created 1st Earl of Pembroke after having adopted ‘Herbert’ as his surname.

Business and politics

Bearers of the Thomas name have also achieved historical fame as entrepreneurs and politicians.

Recognised as having not only revolutionised the iron industry in his native Wales but also influential in the birth of the industrial revolution in the United States, David Thomas was born in 1794 in Cadoxton, near Neath.

The son of a farmer, he turned his back on the land for a much different career in the smoke and din of the iron industry, finding employment in the Swansea Valley at the Yniscedwyn Works, in Ystradgynlais.

It was in 1837 that, using a hot blast technique to smelt anthracite coal and iron ore, he developed a simple method to produce anthracite iron.

Recognised by this date as one of Britain’s leading ironmasters, he took up employment two years later with the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania – building a furnace for the production of anthracite iron.

This proved a success and, two years later and along with his son Samuel, he set up his own ironworks in the small Pennsylvanian community of Catasauqua – and it was the iron produced from this works that built the first American-made cast-iron construction columns, pipes and tunnel tubes.

This included iron used in the construction of New York City’s Lincoln and Holland Tunnels.

A noted philanthropist and with he and his wife Elizabeth known as “the father and mother of Catasauqua”, a founder of the American Association of Industrial Engineers and the first president of the American Society of Metallurgy, he died in 1882.

Not only a prominent Welsh industrialist but also a Liberal Party politician, David Alfred Thomas, better known as D.A. Thomas and later more formally as 1st Viscount Rhondda, was born in 1856.

The son of the coalmine owner Samuel Thomas, of Ysguborwen, Aberdare, he eventually took over control of the family business of Cambrian Collieries and greatly expanded it.

A frequently controversial figure, he refused to take the side of fellow members of what was known as the Cambrian Combine during a strike by miners in 1898, and subsequently stated he felt ‘betrayed’ when his employees were involved in a strike two years later.

This strike culminated in the infamous Tonypandy Riots, also known as the Rhondda Riots, when the then Home Secretary Winston Churchill controversially despatched troops to South Wales to break the strikers’ resolve – still a cause of resentment to this day.

Owner of Llanwern House, near Newport, Monmouthshire, Thomas served as Liberal Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Merthyr Tydfil from 1888 until 1910 and then for Cardiff.

Having served for a time during the First World War as Minister for Food Control and as Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s special emissary to the United States, he died in 1918, only a short time after being created Viscount Rhondda.

One particularly colourful and feisty bearer of the Thomas name was his daughter Margaret Haig Thomas – the author, newspaper editor and campaigner for women’s rights who took the title of Viscountess Rhondda following her father’s death.

Born in 1883 in Bayswater, London, and educated at St Leonard’s School in the Scottish east coast town of St Andrews – where her mother’s family, the Haigs, hailed from – and for a brief period at Somerville College, Oxford, she settled in Wales and worked for a time as her father’s business secretary.

Marrying Humphrey Mackworth in 1908, with Mackworth inheriting his father’s baronetcy six years later, she settled in Llansoar, Monmouthshire, but the couple became estranged – not least because she was a Liberal and he was a Conservative.

Ignoring her husband’s protests, she became actively involved in the suffragette campaign for women’s rights that included the right to vote.

A member of the Women’s Social and Political Union, one of her exploits involved jumping onto the running-board of Prime Minister H.H. Asquith’s car while he was visiting St Andrews, while she also learned how to set pillar boxes alight as a form of protest.

Sentenced to a month’s imprisonment for her actions on behalf of the suffragist cause in Gwent, she stubbornly refused to eat and was released after spending ten days behind bars.

With the suffragettes rallying behind the national interest during the dark days of the First World War of 1914 to 1918, in the final year of the conflict the government entrusted her with the post of ‘chief recruiting officer’ for women in Britain – encouraging them to aid the war effort.

Three years earlier, in May of 1915, both she and her father were among the survivors when the German submarine U-20 torpedoed and sank the transatlantic cruise liner Lusitania off the south coast of Ireland – with the loss of 1,200 lives.

At the end of the war, and along with a group of other women, she founded the politically independent weekly newspaper Time and Tide, editing it for nearly 40 years.

Having divorced her husband in 1923 and with the couple not having had any children, her family’s title became extinct on her death in 1958.

One bearer of the Thomas name who came to hold high government office, Thomas George Thomas was the British Labour Party politician more formally known as 1st Viscount Tonypandy.

Born in 1909 in Port Talbot, the son of a miner, he was employed for a time as a schoolteacher before being elected MP for Cardiff Central in 1945.

Holding this seat until 1950, he then held the seat of Cardiff West until his retirement from the House of Commons in 1983.

During the administration of Prime Minister Harold Wilson, he had held the post from 1968 to 1970 as Secretary of State for Wales, while from 1976 to 1983 he was Speaker of the House of Commons.

Raised to the Peerage as Viscount Tonypandy of Rhondda, in the County of Mid Glamorgan, it was seven years after his death in 1997 that the former Welsh Labour MP Leo Abse controversially claimed in his book Tony Blair: The Man Behind the Smile, that the former Speaker had been the victim of blackmail because of his alleged homosexuality.

In contemporary politics, Dafydd Elis Elis-Thomas, more formally known as Baron Elis-Thomas, is the Welsh politician born in Carmarthen in 1946 and who was raised in the Llandysul area of Ceredigion and in Llanrwst, in the Conwy Valley.

Having served as a Plaid Cymru MP for Merionnydd and for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy and a former leader of his party, he held the position of Presiding Officer of the National Assembly for Wales from its inception in 1999 until 2011.

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