This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Blind Tom, Wiggins Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/ok.2ADE/4348 Message Board Post: THE FREMONT COUNTY SUN. June 18, 1908. " 'Blind Tom' Dies in Poverty".-- New York, June 14,--"Blind Tom," the famous negro musician, marvel of three generations of playgoers, died yesterday in Hoboken, N. J., where he had been living for years in retirement and subsisting on charity. Thomas Wiggins is the name given in his burial cerificate, but the surname was one which the famous pianist adopted. He was born a slave near Columbus, Ga., about 1850. In early childhood Tom, who was born entirely blind and more than half idiotic, showed himself remarkably imitative, frequently stealing into the house of his master to reproduce on the piano music he had heard played by others. In 1861 he became so proficient on the instrument that he was taken to New York and exhibited as a phenomenon and later was widely heard in the United States and Europe. N.B.: I believe I have seen notices that "Blind Tom" had played in Fremont county. Too, I am thinking he was married either in Page or Taylor county, Iowa. Does anyone have something on him?--W.F.