Blind Tom (Thomas Wiggins) | The Most Marvellous Genius Living!

Blind Tom (Thomas Wiggins)

The Eight Wonder of the World. The Great Musical Prodigy of the Age. The Most Marvellous Genius Living! New York: Jacob Dux & Co., ca. 1870

Broadside (760 x 335 mm). Numerous fonts, printed in orange and black, Engraving of Thomas Wiggins at top; browned, old folds, a few closed tears, a few marginal chips. Mounted, framed, and glazed with Plexiglas; not examined out of frame. 

The Great Musical Prodigy of the Age.

Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins was a musical prodigy, and one of the most in-demand musicians of the late nineteenth century. In May of 1849, Charity Wiggins, a slave on a Georgia plantation, gave birth at the age of 48 to Thomas. He was born blind, and Charity rightly feared that their owner, deeming the child useless, would sell them along with the rest of her family. Charity asked Gen. James Neil Bethune, a pro-slavery lawyer and newspaper editor, to keep them together. Bethune's decision to buy the family was likely driven by pity, as he couldn't have foreseen the fortune Thomas Wiggins would make him.   

Wiggins began touring the United States at the age of eight, and by the age of ten he had become the first Black musician to give a headline performance at the White House. Indeed, in the first decade of his life, he had become a musical phenomenon, reportedly earning up to $100,000 a year, likely making him the best-compensated performing artist of his time. He became a household name, and Mark Twain followed his career. Perhaps unsurprisingly, little of his earnings went directly to him, and even after emancipation, Wiggins remained essentially an indentured servant, with Bethune becoming his legal guardian.

There has been renewed interest in Wiggins and his works in the twenty-first century, with a new biography by Deirdre O’Connell, John Davis making a recording of fourteen works by Wiggins, and essays by Amiri Baraka and Oliver Sacks.