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 Mary Lee took Tom and his three sisters away from him and back to the United States.

Acting.  In 1980, at the age of eighteen, Tom Cruise moved to New York to pursue an acting career.  His mother and new step-father cheered him along.

Tom’s 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.

Tom has been married to actresses who have been in the public spotlight, first to Nicole Kidman and then to Katie Holmes.  But in recent years, except when he is publicizing his films, Tom has retreated from the public gaze.  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.

Dublin and West 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.

Back and Forth to America.  After Patrick married Teresa Johnson in 1825, he decided to emigrate to America.  Their four children were born in America and Patrick was to stay there eighteen years.

But 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.  He never returned to America and he 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.

Kentucky.  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.  He and his wife Anna raised two sons.

His elder son Thomas II was also a lawyer; and the second of Thomas II’s sons William also became a lawyer and, like his grandfather, a respected judge.

Tom’s Father.  But Thomas II’s 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 lost his family in 1974 and he died without them of cancer in 1984 at the age of fifty.

The Pfeiffer Line

Tom’s mother Mary Lee Pfeiffer – as her name suggests — was German in origin.  Her ancestor Heinrich Pfeiffer, a baker, had immigrated from Gomaringen in Wurttenberg to America with his wife Christiana in 1832.  They made their home in Louisville, Kentucky.

The line from Heinrich Pfeiffer (he became Henry in America) in Louisville ran as follows:

• Charles (Carl) Pfeiffer (1837-1926) m. Jane Gould
• Lee Pfeiffer (1868-1948) m. Anna Shea
• Charles Pfeiffer (1894-1953) m. Comala Ramser
• Mary Lee Pfeiffer (1936-2017)

Charles Pfeiffer started with other stove molders a stove manufacturing company (the Fischer Leaf Co) in Louisville in 1866.  From small beginnings, this venture grew into a sizeable operation – until its eventual sale to a much larger company in 1925.

Charles’s grandson Charles was a World War One veteran, having attained the rank of sergeant during the conflict.  He returned from the war in June 1919 and married his wife Comala in Louisville four months later.

Mary Lee was their third living child and very much the junior member of the family (10-14 years younger than her elder siblings).  She became a teacher.  She married Thomas Mapother in Louisville in 1957 when she was twenty-one.  After their divorce she moved with her daughters to Florida.

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 emigrated to America (Patrick did return to Ireland in 1843)
• – Robert Russell Cruise (1826-1853)
• – Charles Russell Cruise (1832-1892) m. Margaret Cobbin
• – Fanny Russell Cruise (1833-1906) m. John Cotes
• – Mary Russell Cruise (1841-1892)

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

• Judge Thomas Cruise Mapother m. Anna Bateman (1877-1968) in Kentucky in 1907
• – Thomas Cruise Mapother (1907-1986), lawyer
• – Paul Mapother (1911-1978) m. Angela Cashman

• Thomas Cruise Mapother II from Kentucky m. Catherine Reibert (1912-1993) in Indiana in 1934
• – Thomas Cruise Mapother (1934 -1984), Tom Cruise’s father
• – William Mapother (1938-2006) m. Katherine Riehm, lawyer

• Thomas Cruise Mapother III m. Mary Lee Pfeiffer in Kentucky in 1957, divorced in 1974; rem. Joan Kaplan (1930-2005) in Kentucky in 1975 and died in 1984.  Mary Lee rem. Jack South (1925-2015) in Tennessee in 1978 and moved to Florida.
• – Lee Ann Mapother (b. 1959 in Louisville) m. Stephen Burnett, in Florida
• – Marian Mapother (b. 1961 in Louisville) m. Raymond Henry, real estate agent in Florida
• – Thomas (Tom) Cruise Mapother (b. 1962 in Syracuse), film star
• – Cass Mapother (b.1964 in Syracuse) m. Greg Capazorio, in Florida

• Tom Cruise m. Mimi Rogers (b. 1956) in Kentucky 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