Grayson County TXGenWeb

Tom Perry
(ca 1836 – 1906)

Grayson County Poor Farm resident from ca 1893 to 1906

The horse is the motif that ties together the known chapters of Tom Perry's life. While still a boy living along the Rio Grande, he was stolen by horse traders. As a young man of 25 he enlisted in a cavalry regiment of the Army of the Confederacy. As an older man of 60 he may have tended horses at the Fairview Addition Race Track northwest of Sherman. In his final years, as a resident of the Grayson County Poor Farm, he was the hostler who looked after the farm's equine work animals.

The earliest known record of Thomas Perry is in the 1860 United States Census, where he was enumerated on June 14th as a 23-year-old male in Gainesville, Texas. He was living with Dr. W.C. Underwood, 33, and his wife Martha, 18. Dr. Underwood's place of birth was Alabama, Martha Underwood's was the Republic of Texas, and Thomas Perry's was "City Mexico." The relationship between the Underwoods and Perry was not
recorded.

In 1861 Thomas enlisted with the 11th Regiment of the Confederate Texas Cavalry (aka Young's Texas Regiment) at Camp Reeves in Grayson County. On the first muster roll we see that the regiment was organized on October 2nd, and Thomas Perry was appointed to be the bugler on October 5th. In the "Remarks" section is the notation that he was absent "On secret service Dec. 18/61." That means he was out of uniform and on a mission, the nature of which we can only guess. Subsequent muster rolls in 1862 show he was paid nine dollars a month for his services as bugler.

According to the National Park Service's overview of the 11th Regiment, Texas Cavalry, it was "one of the best in Confederate service." It was active initially in the Indian Territory and Arkansas. East of the Mississippi it was dismounted and deployed as an artillery unit in Kentucky and Tennessee. While in Tennessee it was eventually remounted, fighting again as a cavalry regiment on into Georgia and the Carolinas. Only a small number of the men surrendered in North Carolina at war's end. Most simply left the state in small groups and returned to Texas. A few surrendered in Mississippi. Thomas Perry may have been among those few. His name appears on prisoner-of-war rolls dated in Mississippi in May 1865.

The previous fall he spent a month in a hospital in Montgomery, Alabama. The following spring he was hospitalized again for a month in Jackson, Mississippi. He was released from there about a month before the war ended. The "Complaint" listed for his second hospitalization was "Bubo Sympathetic," a medical term for the swelling and inflammation attendant to gonorrhea.

After the war Tom Berry, better known to his friends as "Tom Mexico" (a name he called himself), returned to Grayson County, where he lived out the remainder of his life in Sherman. From 1865 to the early 1890s his activities are unknown, but according to his obituary in The Denison Daily Herald, "He had lived in Sherman the greater part of his life up to the time he was taken to the county farm." The Herald went on to say that at the time of his death, "He had been at the county farm for thirteen years." Counting backward 13 years from his death in 1906, we can date his arrival at the farm to around 1893.

The 1896-97 Sherman City Directory lists a "colored" man named Thomas Perry living and working at the Fairview Addition Race Track northwest of the city, probably not far from the poor farm. If the directory's designation of "colored" included persons of Mexican descent, Tom Mexico may have left the poor farm briefly to take a job tending racehorses. The 1905 Sherman City Directory lists Tom Perry, a farmer, at 117 Lee Street.

If he did leave the county farm one or more times during his final seven years, he may have supported himself, at least in part, with his pension as an "Indigent Soldier or Sailor of the late Confederacy." His application for it was approved September 28, 1899. The act creating the pensions was passed by the Texas Legislature in May of that year, and Tom Applied the following month. On the application he stated that he had lived in Sherman since 1865. He gave his age as 63. In the 1860 Census he had been 23. The Census and pension application, taken together, point to a birth year of 1836. His obituary says he was 66 when he died, but that is almost certainly several years less than his actual age. On the pension application he stated that he was unable to work due to "spells of epilepsy." An accompanying affidavit from the county physician, Dr. T.S. Freeman, confirmed that diagnosis. The two witnesses to the application were John Blain, Sherman Chief of Police, and Jim Vaden, whose family owned the land that became the poor farm in the late 1870s.

In early August of 1906 a story in The Denison Daily Herald reported on the 29th reunion of the 11th Texas Cavalry. The reunion was being held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Old Settlers' Association in Sherman. Among the veterans of the 11th mentioned was Capt. W. Underwood of Honey Grove, but he was not the W.C. Underwood listed with Thomas Perry in the 1860 Census. The story concludes with a few lines about the regiments' bugler, "a small Mexican, who calls himself Tom Mexico." His comrades, who remembered him as a "unique character," were hoping he would attend. In a brief account of his life the Herald reported that, after Tom's rescue from the horse traders, "he was reared and educated by a Sherman lady." The identity of that lady remains unknown, and the extent of his education is open to question. On his pension application he signed his name with an "X."

It is not known whether Tom "Mexico" Perry made it to the reunion. He died less than four months later. The date of death on his gravestone in Sherman's West Hill Cemetery is November 29, 1906. The 29th fell on Thursday that year. His obituary, published the same day, said he had died the previous day, Wednesday 28th. It seems somehow appropriate that his life, so much of which remains a mystery, should end on that uncertain note.