Thomas Rogers (c. 1571 – January 11, 1621) was a Leiden Separatist who traveled in 1620 with his eldest son Joseph as passengers on the historic voyage of the Pilgrim ship Mayflower. Thomas Rogers was a signatory to the Mayflower Compact, but perished in the winter of 1620/21. His son Joseph, who at the age of 17 had travelled with Thomas on the Mayflower but had been too young to sign the Mayflower Compact, survived to live a long life.<ref name="plimoth">A genealogical profile of Thomas Rogers, (a collaboration of Plimoth Plantation and New England Historic Genealogical Society accessed 2013) [http://www.plimoth.org/media/pdf/rogers_thomas.pdf]</ref> English origins Thomas Rogers was born in the area of the village of Watford, in Northamptonshire, England, which has extensive history from the Roman, Dane, Viking and Saxon eras. His birth year of approximately 1571 is based on his date of marriage. Thomas Rogers was a son of William Rogers and his wife Eleanor. He married Alice Cosford in Watford parish October 24, 1597, with their six children being baptized there between 1598 and 1613. The family went to Leiden from England sometime after their last child, Margaret, was baptized in 1613. In Leiden Thomas Rogers was a member of the English Separatist church and sometime after 1613, the last recorded baptism of his children, he, his wife, and children, moved to Leiden as members of the Separatist church there. The earliest Leiden record for Thomas Rogers notes that on February 14, 1614 he bought a house on Barabarasteeg from Jan Bloemsaer, a baker. Leiden records also notes that Rogers became a citizen of Leiden on June 25, 1618, guaranteed by Englishmen William Jepson from Worksop, Nottinghamshire and Roger Wilson of Sandwich, co. Kent. That record states that he was a merchant of camlet, a luxury Asian-type fabric made from a combination of silk and camel's hair.Eugene Aubrey Stratton, Plymouth Colony: Its History and People, 1620-1691, (Salt Lake City: Ancestry Publishing, 1986), p. 345 Other Leiden records for Thomas Rogers show that in 1619, when he was preparing to sell his house in preparation for his departure from Leiden for America, he found that his property still had an outstanding lien on it, forcing him to sue Jan Bloemsaer, from whom he originally purchased the home, and bondsman Gerrit Gerritsz. He was finally able to sell his home on April 1, 1620 to Mordecheus Colven for three hundred guilders. Per