Courtesy of Northern Neck of Virginia Historical Magazine,
December 1988, Volume XXXVIII NO. 1, pgs. 4354-4389
by PAUL H. VERDUIN
Copywright 1988 by Paul H. Verduin
Lincoln all at once said: "Billy, I'll tell you something, but keep it a secret while I live. My mother was a bastard, was the daughter of a nobleman so called of Virginia. My mother's mother was poor and credulous, etc., and she was shamefully taken advantage of by the man. My mother inherited his qualities and I hers. All that I am or ever hope to be I get from my mother, God bless her."
These raw, shocking words were reportedly spoken by Springfield, Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln to William H. Herndon, his law-practice partner, about ten years before Lincoln's election to the presidency. The two were alone, Herndon later claimed, on a half-day's horse-and-buggy ride to neighboring Menard County, and the complicated inheritance case they were prosecuting there braught to Lincoln's mind his own tangled heritage. From the words there streams, like a shaft of light, a dimension of our 16th president's inner sence of identity that scholars have never adequately explored.
This article is a report on two years of empirical research, in previously neglected documents, which has attempted to discover what primary data may yet exist relating to Lincoln's apparent claim to a Virginia "nobleman" grandfather--and, more importantly, to his apparent belief that his better "qualities" came from that mysterious figure. If Lincoln indeed believed that "all hee was or hoped to be" he owed to traits passed down to him, through his mother, from an aristocrat who lived around the time of the American Revolution in a commonwealth where slavery predominated, then it can be said that Lincoln's self-concept, self-esteem, and sense of identity were very much wrapped up in his personal conception of this individual.
Like many others in his day, Abraham Lincoln seems to have held to the view that character elements and intellectual aptitude are directly determined by inherited traits. By late-20th-century standards, such a view is unscientific. Few today would dispute the fact that parental guidance, educational opportunities, peer relationships, and personal experience are much more significant. Nonetheless, it is highly important to our understanding of Lincoln if he himself though his mother's father's genes were what enabled him to move up in life.
Beyond the question of Lincoln's mother's paternity, the object of the research has been to determine if evidence could be found that would improve our understanding of the roots of Lincoln's own sense of identity, and of his basic attitudes toward the central issues in his life and thought-liberty and the American Union.
Ten major findings and conclusions are discussed in this article:
1)Previous research on the origins of Lincoln's mother's family-the Hanks family-in Richmond County, Virginia, conducted and published during the 1920's by William E. Barton, was superficial at best.
2)The Joseph Hanks family migrated from Richmond County to what is now Mineral County, West Virginia in 1783, a year later than Barton reported. By that time, Joseph Hanks' teen-age daughter, Lucey Hanks (c.1766-c.1826), may have already given birth out of wedlock to Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln (c.1783-1818).
3)Census and tax records showing Joseph Hanks in Hampshire County, Virginia (in the part that is now in Mineral and Grant counties, West Virginia) in 1782 reflect his presence there only during the summer and early fall of that year. This was an initial, tentative, temporary sojourn. He then returned to Richmond County, where he is of record at least three times, from December of 1782 through April of 1783.
4)The birthdate of Lincoln's mother that is often cited-February 5, 1784-is from a secondary source compiled some sixty-seven years after the event, and therefore of limited accuracy. Her birth may actually have occured a year of two earlier, in Richmond County rather than in present-day Mineral County, despite claims to the contrary by Barton and the State of West Virginia.
5)The place of residence of the Joseph Hanks family in Richmond County has been located to within a half-mile radius. It was within three miles of the Rappahannock River, in what was then called North Farnham Parish. The family lived on, or very near, a 151-acre tract owned by a planter named Griffin Murdock Fauntleroy (1747-1794).
6)Until January of 1782, Joseph Hanks was employed jointly by the above-named Griffin Fauntleroy and Richard Beale (1759-1819), almost certainly as the overseer of thir adjacent plantations and approximately forty slaves. Both were well-bred Virginia planters of local prominence.
7)Large, prosperous plantations lined the Rappahannock River in the immediate vicinity where Joseph Hanks and his teen-age daughter, Lucey Hanks (Lincoln's grandmother) resided. In this socio-geographical context, Lincoln's story of his artistocratic planter-grandfather is well within the limits of the possible-particularly since several cases of extra-marital liasions of the part of high-ranking planters of the areas during the 1770's and 1780's have been documented.
8)In 1776, an uncle of Lincoln's grandmother named Alexander Hanks died at the battle of Harlem Heights during the attempt by Washington's fledgling army to defend New York City and harbor. The battle was Washington's first victory.
9)In 1743, Lincoln's grandmother's grandfather William Lee, an earlier Richmond County plantation overseer in the family, was jailed and charged with a felony for brutally beating a runaway slave to death. (This William Lee was no relation to the aristocratic Lees of Stratford Hall, or any of the other prominent Lee families of Virginia.)
10)The missing grandfather of Lincoln has not been found, but a number of suspects have been identified. Among them is the above-named Griffin Fauntleroy, but also a nephew of Revolutionary War statesman Richard Henry Lee named Elisha Lingan Hall (1763-c.1819). In 1782, Hall inherited from his mother Hannah Ludwell (Lee) Corbin, a Baptist, a plantation that bordered the tract of land where Lincoln's grandmother, about three years his junior, probably lived.
Hopefully, the rather provacative nature of some of these ten findings and conclusions will encourage the reader to read on for the details and documentations. The ten discoveries and judgements signal the opening of an entirely new dimension in Lincoln scholarship. Indeed, they lead this writer to assert the following thesis: the roots of Lincoln's basic sence of identity, and basic attitudes toward slavery and the American Union, are to be fount, to a very large degree, in the history of his family in Richmond County and the Northern Neck of Virginia during the eighteenth century and the era of the American Revolution.
The article has been divided into these sections:
1.HERNDON, SCRIPPS, AND THE "ADMIRABLE QUALITIES"
2.THE SUPERFICIAL NATURE OF WILLIAM BARTON'S RESEARCH
3.DATING LINCOLN'S MOTHER'S BIRTH
4.JOSEPH HANKS:KENTUCKY PIONEER FROM VIRGINIA'S NORTHERN NECK
5.LUCEY'S GRANDFATHER:WILLIAM LEE, WHO KILLED THE SLAVE
6.LUCEY'S UNCLE ALEXANDER HANKS:A REVOLUTIONARY WAR CASUALTY
7.THE POST REVOLUTIONARY UPROOTING OF JOSEPH HANKS AND HIS FAMILY
8.THE JUNE, 1782 GRAND JURY INDICTMETN OF ____HANKS
9.UNFINISHED BUSINESS:THE RETURN TO RICHMOND COUNTY
10.THE PROOF FOR JOSEPH HANKS RESUMED PRESENCE IN RICHMOND COUNTY
11.1783:THE FINAL DEPARTURE FROM RICHMOND COUNTY
12.THE SEARCH FOR JOSEPH HANKS' RICHMOND COUNTY HOMESTEAD
13.LUCEY'S GENTLEMAN-PLANTER NEIGHBORS
14.ANOTHER NEIGHBOR:ELISHA LINGAN HALL,NEPHEW OF RICHMOND HENRY LEE
15.LUCEY HANKS AND HER GRANDSON LINCOLN
16.CONCLUSION:THE ROOTS OF LINCOLN'S IDENTITY,AND THE SEARCH FOR MORE DOCUMENTS