Thomas Rogers came to Boston from rural County Mayo with his family in the 1870's as a young man and settled in Milton, Massachusetts. There he eventually met and married Mary Kilroy who had also emigrated from Mayo with her family. By 1900, the Rogers' had come to the city of Rye, New York, where Thomas, as a local estate manager, bought land and built a house that remained in the family for the next 70-plus years.