Thomas Dabney Dimitry

Thomas Dabney Dimitry (March 11, 1850 - November 3, 1936) was a mixed-race clerk, superintendent, and secretary. He was the son of Alexander Dimitry and Mary Powell Mills, an interracial couple. Throughout his life, Alexander endured countless instances of racism along with the Dimitry Family. The Dimitry Family passed as white to escape racial hardships. Alexander, was the first person of color to function as the principal clerk for the Southwest Postal Department in Washington, D.C in 1835, a position he held for four years, and he was one of the few people of color to hold a government position in the Confederate Government as chief clerk to the postmaster general and later assistant postmaster general of the Confederacy.

His son Thomas, was one of the first mixed-race Creole post office superintendents in the largest post office in New Orleans. Thomas spent most of his life serving the U.S Postal Service, performing many duties. He was a stamp clerk for sixteen years. For ten years, he was a money order issuing clerk and then became superintendent of the money order department. Thomas was also the assistant superintendent of mail and superintendent of postal station C. He served as secretary and member of the Postal Board of the U. S. Civil Service Examiners. Thomas's second wife was a Cuban woman named Maria Manuela Jacobsen, who was the sister of Dr. Joaquin Jacobsen.

Thomas was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1850. He was a member of a prominent Creole family known as the Dimitry family. His uncle John Baptiste Michael Dracos Dimitry and his father both attended Georgetown University and were educators. By the American Civil War, most of the Dimitry family served the Confederacy. As a teenager, Thomas was a congressional page in the Confederate Congress. By the 1870s, he served the Federal Government as a clerk and eventually worked at the custom house before joining the United States Postal Service from 1881 until 1920. He served the post office for over 39 years, which was remarkable due to his ethnic background because during the Jim Crow era, laws became more severe, including segregation, and eventually the one-drop rule was adopted in Louisiana by 1910. Thomas died at eighty-six years old.