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Courtesy of the late David S. Keiser of Greensboro, North Carolina
How I Found Nancy Hanks' Father, Thomas Hanks, Without Trying
By David S. Keiser, 3-23-1970
Somewhat proud of my comprehensive LINCOLN FAMILY TREE, after 25 years of study, I kept it uncontroversial by listing Nancy Hanks - as of unknown parentage. After educating myself on Hanks history by studying Adin Baber's massive & excellent NANCY HANKS OF UNDISTINGUISHED ANCESTRY, the summer of 1969, I thought, why not add to my chart, the known ancestry of Nancy Hanks. Lincoln had said she was a first cousin of rail-splitter John Hanks, so Nancy had the same grandparents, JOE & NANNY HANKS, as John. Just before he died in 1793, Joe Hanks made his now famous will, citing their five sons and three daughters. I could set up as a parent of Nancy Hanks - a child of Joe & Nanny. As eight children-possiblities were too many to type into any family tree niche, I began paring down. The youngest daughter and sons were not old enough. Daughter #2 willed her property to Dennis Hanks, so would not be Nancy's mother. While sleuthing, I found in Lincoln Lore #28, Warren pointed out that the wedding bond of Nancy Hanks and Tom Lincoln was signed by "Richard Berry, gardin". Had Nancy that June tenth, 1806, been twenty-one, she would not have had a guardian, So she must have been born after June 10, 1785. As February 5ths were observed as her birthdays, Nancy was probably born 2-5-1786 or 2-5-1787.
Lincoln said his mother was born in Virginia - and now we know it was February 5th, 1786. If we can show - and maintain - that Joe & Nanny Hanks had only one child in Virginia at that time, HE or SHE had to be a parent of Nancy Hanks. Valid is my reasoning, is it not?
On pages 187 and 190 of his LINEAGE OF LINCOLN, Barton states:
A. "In 1785 Joseph Hanks mortgaged his farm in Hampshire County, Virginia, and moved to Nelson County, Kentucky."
B. "The only child of Joseph Hanks, who did not accompany the family into Kentucky, was Thomas, first named of the sons in his father's will, and presumably his eldest son."
If Barton was right in those two statements, and the preceding conclusions were correct, then THOMAS HANKS became the father of Nancy Hanks, ex-officio....Instead of exulting, I worried. I wrote a friend: "Barton cannot prove the Joe Hanks of Hampshire County was later the Joe Hanks Hanks of Nelson County. And how does one dispose of the 1782 census report, stating there were eleven souls in Joe Hanks' Hampshire family - and all the children were under twenty-one, when Revolutionary War pension applications showed the oldest son, Thomas, was twenty-three in 1782." However in a series of "Cousin Dorothy" letters, in which Adin Baber gives his experiences, there was one of 4-22-1961 in which he said "I agree with Barton, (the two Joe Hanks were one), but only after finding additional proof, he knew not of, that the man who sold Joe Hanks the Kentucky real estate, was a Hampshire neighbor, " And suddenly it dawned on me that the census was not a will - and Thomas Hanks, at 23, would not be listed thereon, had he left home.
With his too-easy statement that Joe Hanks "moved to Kentucky in 1784," Barton gave some hard facts: "The Joseph Hanks mortgage, dated March 9, 1784 was for a pitiful sum, twenty-one pounds, nine shilings, in depreciated Virginia script. The mortgage was foreclosed promptly in six months, 9-9-1784. On Feb. 28, 1787, Joseph Hanks purchased a contract of sale and land on Rolling Fork in Nelson County, Kentucky. He made his will in 1793."
Thus by Sept. 9, 1784, Joe Hanks lost his home, and being penniless, could not buy another. He probably in 1784 or 1785 moved on to the Kentucky property of his Hampshire neighbor, helped his four sons build a house, and paid rent until, by 1787, he had saved enough to buy.
I conjecture that shortly after Nancy Hanks' birth in Virginia, her mother died. As Thomas Hanks had no parents or siblings in the state to help raise Nancy, he sent her to relatives of her late mother, the Richard Berrys, perhaps, for raising. Thus no Hanks kin of Nancy ever so much as glimpsed her with either parent. Thus is explained her great anonymity. She had an aunt of the same name, age, and locality - Joe & Nanny's youngest daughter - who, when fifteen and husbandless, had a baby, named Dennis Hanks. When oldtimers were much later asked for recollections of Nancy Hanks, they recalled the bad deeds of the Aunt Nancy - and (wrongly) credited them to Lincoln's mother.
I thank the three greatest Hanks' researchers for conjoining with me to provide Lincoln with a grandfather named Thomas (Hanks). He already had a father, brother, and son named Thomas - the son, "Tad" Lincoln, short for "Tadpole". Dr. Louis A. Warren, Dr. William E. Barton, and Mr. Adin Baber found, respectively - a new birthdate for Nancy Hanks; the fact that Thomas Hanks, alone, remained in Virginia: and proof that the Joseph Hanks family had lived in both Hampshire County, Virginia, and Nelson County, Kentucky.
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