Thomas Bethune

Born Thomas Greene Wiggins, the blind son of two slaves owned by Colonel James Bethune, “Blind Tom” became famous as a musical savant at a young age. Bethune presented Wiggins throughout Georgia before hiring him out to tour across the country. Wiggins played for President James Buchanan in 1860; the Bethunes also offered his talents to the Confederacy during the Civil War. After emancipation, Bethune convinced Wiggins’s parents to appoint him Tom’s legal guardian. Wiggins earned a fortune for his guardians and remained under the care of Bethune family members for the rest of his life.
He was known not only as a skilled performer—he could sing in multiple languages and play a piece of music after hearing it once—but also as a composer of more than one hundred piano and vocal compositions. This portrait appears on the cover of his composition entitled “The Oliver Gallop,” named after Perry Oliver, one of his promoters.