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Thomas Tone (1791-1850)

"The Texas Bigamist".

From a history scanned by Dan Harrington (same text appears in the Tone Book, p. 101):

Story of Thomas Tone as told to Frank J. Tone (History of Tone Family, 1944) by his son Hiram. "Thomas, second son of John Andrew Tone, as a young man, decided to seek adventure and fortune in the West and went to Cincinnati where he became a riverman and, in the course of time, acquired boats plying between Cincinnati and New Orleans. He took cargoes of tobacco, flour and manufactured products and returned with cotton and sugar. On one occasion, while he was in New Orleans, the price of tobacco took a rapid rise. Leaving for the North, he met boats loaded with tobacco and unaware of the sky rocketing tobacco market. He bought their tobacco, turned about and headed back for New Orleans. When he arrived, the bottom had fallen out of the tobacco market and he found himself hopelessly insolvent.

He sent his boat back to Cincinnati and struck out for Texas, vowing he would not return home until he had recouped his fortunes and was able to pay his creditors.

In later years, his son Hiram, hardly more than a lad, set out on foot for Texas to learn the fate of his father who had been reported dead, and on the strength of which his wife had remarried. He walked a good portion of the way, found his father, but the family fortunes had not been retrieved. Meanwhile, his father had also remarried, having had news that his wife in Cincinnati had died."

  • Married Lorinda Drake (1795-1838) in Campbell County, KY, which is adjacent to Cincinnati and had two children.
  • Later married Sarah Kinsey (unknown) in Matagora Texas (on the coast south of Houston) in 1837. This was then part of the Stephen F. Austin colony.
  • Was part of Stephen F. Austin's original 300 families who moved to Texas while it was still part of Mexico. Austin recruited settlers in New Orleans, with each recruit being "...a family, or in some cases a partnership of unmarried men."
  • N.B. Texas became a state in 1845.

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