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Joseph's wife Ann was, like himself, from one of the county's poorer white families. Her father William Lee (1704-1764) had attempted to better his lot during the 1740's by becoming a plantation overseer in Lunenburg Parish, the other Anglican County, (This poor, illiterate man was certainly no relative of the Lees of Stratford Hall, or of other prominent Virginia families bearing that name.)
While serving as overseer the planter Thomas Barber, who was also one of the "gentlemen justices" for the county court, William Lee fell prey to a combination of bad luck and a mean disposition. One of the black slaves in his charge, a man named Will, ran away but was caught and returned to the platation. The Richmond County Criminal Court minutes for May 18, 1743, give an almost verbatim account of testimony concerning the incident.
Justice Thomas Barber first whipped his captured slave himself. Then he turned him over to his overseer William Lee, who whipped him with a cat-of-nine tails and a cowskin whip, until slave Will had recieved altogether about 200 lashes, according to court testimony. Lee continued to force the proud , rcalcitrant Will to work in the fields. Will then began to complain of abdominal pains, and four days later, he died.
When the word got around the county that William Lee had killed a valuable slave in his prime, another court justice had him jailed. In the county court, Lee was charged with "feloniously killing Will, a man slave," and four witnesses-including his employer, Thomas Barber-testified against him. Since the incident was deemed a felony, the matter was of legal necessity referred to the next court of Oyer and Terminer to be held at "his Majestys Royall Capitol in the Citty of Williamsburg." Lee was released on bond, and ordered to travel to Williamsburg when summoned. Since the records of the courts held in Williamsburg have long since been destroyed by fire, the final outcome of the case cannot be known. From similiar cases in other counties it can be assumed that if there was a conviction, the punishment probably consisted of a stiff penalty and the tell-tale, demeaning branding of Lee's left thumb. But it is unlikely that Lee was convicted. Probably the case was dismissed for lack of conclusive evidence concerning the brutality in the whippings, or concerning the actual cause of death.
One cannot help but wonder whether Abraham Lincoln ever heard about this tragic event that took place sixty-six years before his birth. Lincoln was very much up on his family's lore, and thought some of it important enough to include in his campaign-related autobiographical sketches. For example, he correctly wrote that some of his father Thomas Lincoln's forebears in Berks County, Pennsylvania had been Quakers. This information, based solely on family tradition, was later proven by genealogists to be accurate-for the 1740's, the same time it will be noted, in which Lincoln's ancestor William Lee killed the slave.
William Lee, though no longer as an overseer, continues to appear throughout the 1740's and 50's in Richmond County Court cases, suing his neighbors and being sued for real and imagined offenses. During the late 1740's he moved back to his native North Farnham Parish, and became a tenant on land that Hannah Ludwell (Lee) Corbin bought some seven years before his death. Toward the end of his troubled life he was reduced to abject poverty (and jailed as a debtor) when merchant-creditor Archibal Ritchie of Hobbs Hole (Tappahannock) and William Glascock foreclosed on his debts. The court took everything from him-"wearing apparel only excepted." He died in 1764. The fact that his daughter Ann became the wife of Joseph Hanks is known from the papers relating to a tiny legacy Ann recieved from Lee's aged grandmother in 1747, which was confirmed when the court supervised the settlement of William Lee's debts after his death.
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