McGregor, Thomas, 1755 -

Thomas McGregor was born circa 1755 in Manchester, England.  He married Mercy Moses in 1782 in Mashpee.  According to the Rev. Gideon Hawley, McGregor and Mercy maintained a wigwam in the Great Neck region of the tribal lands, with Thomas serving as the schoolmaster during the winter.  He and his wife were enumerated in Mashpee censuses of 1793, 1800 and 1808. According to Hawley,  McGregor  "[h]as a good judgment, is sober, temperate, and industrious and has acquired property in livestock and by cultivating wild land: altho his help mate is not so good an assistant as might be."  It might be assumed that Hawley was referring to Mercy McGregor. Apparently, the couple had no children.

 

Thomas McGregor signed two Mashpee petitions, one in December of 1788 and the other, twenty-three years, later in 1811.  The first was in favor of substituting a guardian in the place of two others, Gideon Hawley and Reuben Fish, who had declined the position, the result of emerging conflict between the guardians themselves.  The second, much later, was in support of the removal of the overseers and the community's right to self-govern.

 

Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988, Vol. 1; 1793 Mashpee, Autograph File, Houghton Library, Harvard University; 1800 Mashpee Census, Ms. 48: SPG, Account of Indians, Box 2, Folder 16, Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA; Misc. Bound Docs. 1808, MHS, Boston, MA; Petition of the Mashpee Indians to the Massachusetts General Court, 1788.12.29.00; Petition of Moses Pocknet and Other Mashpee Indians to the Legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1811.01.28.00.