Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Tombstone Tuesday ~ William Thom, Scots Immigrant, Windham, New Hampshire

This tombstone was photographed at the Cemetery on the Hill in Windham, New Hampshire.


IN
Memory of
Mr. William Thom
who died
Feb. ye 15th 1795
in the 89th year
of his age.
The sweet remembrance of the just
Shall flourish when they sleep in dust.

William Thom was born in 1706 in New Monklands, Scotland and died on 15 February 1795 in Windham, New Hampshire.  He was the husband of Elizabeth Weir and is considered one of the first settlers in the town of Windham, which was settled apart from Londonderry in  the1730s.  In 1775 William Thom signed the New Hampshire Association test, which was a declaration of independence from England.

UPDATE 10:30am 12 Dec 2013
I was asked on Facebook, "What is the Association Test?"

In 1776 the New Hampshire Committee of Safety drafted a document now called "The Association Test" which was to be signed by all males over the age of 21 ( excluding "lunatics, idiots and negroes", and, of course, women).  This is now considered by genealogists to be like a first New Hampshire census because the documents record not only who signed, but they also list who did not sign.   It is a good snapshot of all the men in NH in 1776.

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The URL for this post is
http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2013/10/tombstone-tuesday-william-thom-scots.html 

Copyright (c) 2013, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

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