Thomas Oliver was born say 1575. … There is a gap in our knowledge of the Oliver family from 1609 to 1616, when they were probably living in a nearby [to Lilford] parish where the registers begin later. … Thomas was a man of some status, as he was one of only six people listed in the 1628 lay subsidy for Thorpe Achurch. The will index for Northamptonshire shows a few Olivers scattered across the county. The one who lived closest to Thomas was William "Olyvear" of Denford, who died in 1627, but his will says nothing about Thomas and his family. … John Hull recorded in his diary that on the "1st of the 11th month [January 1657/8], Mr. Thomas Oliver, one of the ruling elders of this church, died, being ninety years old, - a man by his outward profession a chirurgeon." ["The Diaries of John Hull," Archaelogia Americana: Transactions and collections of the American Antiquarian Society 3 (1857):182. The age given is probably an exaggeration.]