Tom Cruise Family History

Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, better known as the actor Tom Cruise, was born on July 3rd, 1962 to Thomas Cruise Mapother III and his wife Mary Lee in Syracuse, New York.

Tom did not have a settled or happy childhood.  He attended fifteen schools in fourteen years.  He would later describe his father as a bully.  In 1974, when the family was in Canada, his mother took Tom and his sisters away from him and back to the United States.

In 1980, at the age of eighteen, Tom Cruise moved to New York to pursue an acting career.  His big break came in 1986 with the release of Top Gun.  After that came The Color of Money with Paul Newman and Rain Man with Dustin Hoffman and his status as a superstar was cemented.  His later role as Ethan Hunt in the Mission Impossible series of films confirmed him as an action hero.

Tom Cruise was converted to Scientology by his first wife Mimi Rogers in 1986 and became an advocate for the Church of Scientology in the 2000’s.

In recent years, except when he is publicizing his films, Tom has retreated from public view.  He is reportedly living in England, at Biggin Hill in Kent southeast of London. He did make a cameo video appearance in King Charles III’s Coronation Concert in 2023.

Cruise in Ireland

When Tom Cruise visited Ireland in 2013 for a film opening in Dublin, he was presented with research on his Irish ancestry.  He was told that his Cruise name originated with Augustino de Cruce, one of Strongbow’s soldiers in the invasion of Ireland in the 1170’s.  His descendants established themselves in Ireland and held lands in Dublin and Meath.

In 1766 Andrew Cruise married Bridget Russell and they settled in the Russell home of Drynam House in north Dublin.  Patrick Russell Cruise, born in 1799, was a younger son of this family and thus did not inherit the house, although he did receive some land in West Meath.  After he married Teresa Johnson in 1825, he decided to emigrate to America..

Patrick did return to Ireland in 1843 when he heard that the tenants on his West Meath land were being evicted against his wishes.  He was able to restore these tenants to their lands.  But he never returned to America and died in Dublin in 1849.

Cruise, O’Mara and Mapother

After leaving Ireland Patrick and Teresa had first come to New York and later made their home in New Jersey.  Mary Pauline Russell Cruise, born there in 1841, was the youngest of their children.  She was just a babe when Patrick went back to Ireland.

In 1858 Mary, a lively girl, married Dillon Mapother from a respectable Anglo-Irish family in Louisville, Kentucky.  They raised two children, Dillon and Wible.  But disaster struck in 1874 when Dillon Sr. died of food poisoning and Mary was left to raise the family on her own.

Within a year she married another Irishman and took his name O’Mara as her own.  But when their child came to be born in 1876, the baby was inexplicably given her first husband’s last name – Thomas Cruise Mapother.

Perhaps it was that respectability was being maintained for her son Thomas.  He was able to go to law school and in time became a Jefferson county judge.  One of his sons William also became a lawyer and, like his father, a respected judge.

However, his elder son Thomas – Tom Cruise’s father – had no interest in the law and studied engineering in college.  After college he married and took a job with General Electric.

He was to move around a lot with GE and was in Syracuse, New York in 1962 when his son Tom was born.  The family later went to Ottawa when Thomas took a consulting job with the Canadian Armed Forces.  He died in 1984 without his family at the age of fifty.

Tom Cruise’s Family Tree

• Patrick Russell Cruise (1799-1849) from Drynam House in Dublin m. Teresa Johnson (1805-1876) in Meath in 1825 and they emigrated to America
• – Robert Russell Cruise (1826-1853)
• – Charles Russell Cruise (1832-1892)
• – Fanny Russell Cruise (1833-1906)
• – Mary Russell Cruise (1841-1892)

• Mary Russell Cruise m. Dillon Henry Mapother (1832-1874) in Kentucky in 1858 and rem. Thomas O’Mara (1835-1905) in Kentucky in 1876
• – Dillon Edward Mapother (1862-1933), half-brother
• – Wible Lawrence Mapother (1872-1926), half-brother, died in Panama
• – Thomas Cruise Mapother aka O’Mara (1876-1939)

• Thomas Cruise Mapother m. Anna Bateman (1877-1968) in 1907
• – Thomas Cruise Mapother (1907-1986)
• – Paul Mapother (1911-1978)

• Thomas Cruise Mapother II m. Catherine Reibert (1912-1993) in 1934
• – Thomas Cruise Mapother (1934 -1984)
• – William Mapother (1938-2006)

• Thomas Cruise Mapother III m. Mary Lee Pfeiffer (1936-2017) in 1958
• – Lee Ann Mapother (b. 1959 in Louisville)
• – Marian Mapother (b. 1961 in Louisville)
• – Tom Cruise Mapother (b. 1962 in Syracuse)
• – Cass Mapother (b.1964 in Syracuse)

• Tom Cruise m. Mimi Rogers (b. 1956) in 1987, divorced in 1990; rem. Nicole Kidman (b. 1967) in 1990. divorced in 2001; rem. Katie Holmes (b. 1978) in 2006, divorced in 2012.
• – Isabella (Bella) Cruise (b. 1992), adopted with Nicole, m. Max Parker
• – Connor Cruise (b. 1995), adopted with Nicole
• – Suri Cruise (b. 2006) with Katie