GALLERY: Blind Tom
The Woodward Opera House is located in Mount Vernon.
By the age of 10, Blind Tom was already famous and widely published, as this sheet music cover demonstrates. Before the Civil War, Tom was the highest-paid pianist in the world. Almost all that money went to the slave's owner, General Bethune.
This photograph is the only known image of Tom playing. Though he lived until 1908, it does not appear that anyone thought to record him playing.
General Bethune served as Blind Tom's manager. After the Emancipation Proclamation freed southern slaves, Bethune pressured Tom's parents into signing control of Tom over to him. He later had Tom declared non compos mentis, and passed the musician on to his son.
Around 1880, Tom was at the height of his success and fame. After John Bethune died, Tom became the subject of a hotly contested custody case.
Tom's mother, Charity Wiggins, supported Eliza Bethune's attempt to wrest control of Tom away from her late husband's family. After successfully doing so, however, Eliza refused to share any of Tom's income with his mother, and she returned to Georgia, never to see her son again.
Stressed from the custody chaos, Blind Tom was allowed to go into semi-retirement. He returned periodically for limited engagements, but declining health ended his public career. He kept playing for his own enjoyment up to 12 hours a day, until he was felled by a serious of strokes in 1908, aged 59.
Thomas Wiggins, known as “Blind Tom,” was an autistic savant who became one of the most famous entertainers of the 1800s.
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MOUNT VERNON -- The house was packed. A buzz of excitement ran through the air. Friends and …
