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The late 1782 return of Joseph Hanks to Richmond County had been a mixed blessing. He had finally received his little share of the proceeds from the sale of his mother's belongings, but his brother's legacy had been taken from him in court. More importantly, he had been unsuccessfuly in collecting the debt owed him by Fauntleroy and Beale, his two former employers. He was not to receive compensation for this debt for another two years. Another personal disppointment may have beset him during this final stay in the Virginia Tidewater, for this may well have been the time that he discovered his daughter Lucey was pregnant. She may have given birth in Richmond County on February 5, 1783, and the father of the child may have been one of the neighborin planters of wealth and breeding-or one of their sons.
Had Lucey, her mother, and all of her brothers and sister accompanied her father to Hampshire County the first time he went, in June of 1782? With the data available, this question cannot be answered with certainty.
There exists evidence, however, that strongly suggest that Joseph Hanks may not have brought his entire family with him to Hampshire County when he first sojourned there in 1782. Despite the fact that Joseph with his few horses and cattle, and ten dependents, was taxed and enumerated there in 1782, there is no mention of him and his household in the personal property tax records of the vicinity for the spring and summer of 1783-or of 1784, or any later year, for that matter. Yet, the tax records for the vicinity covering those years appear to be complet and in extremely good order. The same individual served as tax commissioner for the neighborhood during those years, and he took census in 1782. Nearly all of the household heads who appear in the listing for the Patterson Creek valley in 1782 appear again in 1783 and 1784, including the William Lee mentioned earlier by the writer as a neighor of Joseph Hanks in 1782.
The conclusion is inescapable, therefore, that Joseph Hanks was not in Hampshire County during the growing season of 1783. One would also conclude that his wife and dependent children were not there, since no cows or horses were taxed there under his name, or the name of anyone else by the name of Hanks.
Practical economic concerns might have kept Joseph Hanks from taking his whole family, including young Lucey, to Virginia's western frontier in 1782. First of all, a suitable tract of land would need to be located, and a purchase or tenancy negotiated. In western Hampshire of the time (now Mineral and Grant counties), the tract would almost certainly have been a virgin forest. This meant that many large trees would need to be felled and cleared away before a kitchen garden and the semblance of a crop would be planted among the stumps. Secondly, a large cabin would need to be built for the large family, and outbuildings constructed for the livestock. If the 1782 homestead was the same as the one Joseph Hanks mortgaged in March of 1783, it can be safely said that we the first settler on its wooded hillside, according to land-warrant and survey documentation related to that property, discovered by the writer.
Would it not have made more sence for Joseph Hanks to have reconnoitered the Hampshire County area first, obtained a farm, built a bain and cleared part of the land before bringing all of his large family there? (We see a similiar hedging-of-bets on Joseph's part when he mortgaged, rather than sold, his Hampshire farm in March of 1784, prior to his migration to Kentucky.) The writer leans toward this possibility. The ten dependent persons in Joseph's household at the time of the 1782 census could have been some of his older sons (possibly three were between 14 and 20) plus other young men hired as "land jobbers" to prepare the farm for settlement.
The writer suspects that Lucey, her sisters, and possibly her mother Ann, stayed behind in Richmond County, the first time her father left for Hampshire, and that she did not leave her native North Farnham Parish until the late spring of 1783.
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