Tom, Oklahoma

Tom is an unincorporated community in McCurtain County in Southeast Oklahoma.

At one time, the area around Tom was settled by former slaves of the Choctaw Tribe. Robert M. Jones, a Choctaw politician and planter, had four plantations in what is now the Choctaw-McCurtain County area of Oklahoma, but before statehood was in the southeastern part of the Choctaw Nation. By 1861, Jones “had acquired 227 enslaved men, women, and children who lived and labored upon his four cotton plantations along the Red River. The Colonel also operated three steamboats that conveyed thousands of bales of Choctaw cotton to New Orleans before returning to Jones, laden with products to dress the shelves of the general stores that he ran in the large towns of the Choctaw Nation.”

https://repository.lib.ncsu.edu/bitstream/handle/1840.20/33347/etd.pdf?sequence=1

Additional indications of Jones’ wealth are included in the Oklahoma Historical Society Encyclopedia.

“At the peak of his success he ran approximately twenty-eight trading stores, six plantations along the Arkansas and Texas borders, and a sugar plantation in Louisiana. The two largest plantations were Lake West, with almost five thousand acres near present Oberlin, and Rocky Comfort, with approximately ten thousand acres. He was the largest slaveholder in Indian Territory, owning approximately 225 slaves at any given time.”

http://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=JO022

Other sources said Jones had 250 slaves or 500 slaves and two steamboats.

Jones maintained headquarters of his farming operations at Rose Hill Plantation, southeast of today’s Hugo. A family cemetery marks the location of the plantation. The big house burned in 1912 (or 1911 or 1915, depending on sources).

Tom is one of those places you aren’t there unless you intend to be or you are lost. Tom is not West Oklahoma out there, but the idea is the same.

Here is a satellite image of Tom and the surrounding fields and woods:

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7359468,-94.5729863,5042m/data=!3m1!1e3

Facebook has a page established for Tom, but posts on the page are not related to the community.

Here is a You Tube video of a German band and singers doing something about Oklahoma and Tom:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCLaJIV4mOk