on 28 January 1758. Thomas moved to Great Barrington in 1774, where he settled into a house on a small piece of land by the Housatonic River. Over the next several years, his success as a hatmaker allowed him to marry, increase his landholdings, and expand his house as his family grew. He spent much time away from home, as he rose through the ranks in the military on the side of the American revolutionaries during the American Revolutionary War. Upon his return to Great Barrington, he was made a magistrate. Elizabeth gave birth to three more girls: Elizabeth Franks on 17 October 1779; Mira (or Myra) in 1781; and Abigail in September 1783. They gave up Abigail for adoption in 1784 to an aunt with the surname Nash. Elizabeth Ingersoll died 20 February 1784. Thomas remarried the following year to Mercy Smith, widow of Josiah Smith, on 26 May 1785. Mercy had no children. She has been credited with teaching her stepdaughters to read and do needlework before her death from tuberculosis in 1789. By adolescence, the eldest daughter Laura was caring for her sisters and looking after the household affairs. Thomas remarried four months after Mercy's death, on 20 September 1789, to Sarah "Sally" Backus, a widow with a daughter, Harriet. The couple had an additional four girls and three boys. The first boy, Charles Fortescue, was born on 27 September 1791. Charlotte (born 1793) and Appolonia (born 1811) were the last members of this branch of the Ingersoll family to be born in Massachusetts. Thomas helped suppress Shays' Rebellion in 1786, which earned him the rank of major. In the years following, he witnessed and was offended by the continuing persecution of Loyalists in Massachusetts. He realized that in the depressed economic conditions that followed the Revolutionary War, and with his own deep debts, he was unlikely to see his former prosperity again. In 1793, Thomas met in New York City with Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, who offered to show him the best land for settlement in Upper Canada, where the Crown was encouraging development. He and four associates travelled to Upper Canada to petition Lieutenant Governor John Simcoe for a land grant. They received in the Thames Valley, and founded Oxford-on-the-Thames (later known as Ingersoll, Ontario), on condition that they populate it with forty other families within seven years. After winding up their affairs in Great