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The above discussion has illustrated, in considerable detail, the social, economic and religious circumstances of the family of Lincoln's grandmother Lucey Hanks during the generation prior to her birth, and during the time of her own upbringing and maturation to womanhood. It has also demonsttated that Lucey may well have remained in Richmond County until May or June of 1783. These circumstances and inferences tend to make the possibility of the essential accuracy in Lincoln's circa 1850 confession to Herndon about her much more likely. But who were her "Virginia nobleman" neighbors? Who could her lover or liaison have been?
Certainly, those well-bred gentlemen planters of Richmond County who were Lucey's immediate neighbors at the time she became pregnant would have to be viewed with the greatest suspicion, barring other clues. Their older-teen-age and young-adult sons would also need to be investigated, even if they had not yet assumed control of their own plantations at the time. We cannot be certain that the term "Virginia noblemen" would exclude the gentlemen-planters' heirs-apparent. But to find the Hanks' neighbors, the Richmond County home of the Hanks family itself must be located.
The search for Joseph Hanks' homestead site in Richmond County is fraught with difficulties, since no evidence can be found that he ever owned any land there. The deed books do not record that he ever bought, sold, rented, or mortgaged any-although some deeds, and most tenancy contracts, were not recorded. His name does not appear on the surviving lists of the votes cast by landholding voters. His mother did not own land at the time of 1778-79 death. One must assume that he was a tenant living on someone else's property. There were many such tenants in Richmond County throughout the eighteenth century: foreclosures by the creditors such as merchants Archibald Ritchie and Hudson Muse meant that many small freeholders, unable to compete against the scale economics of planters working dozens or even hundreds of slaves, ended up as tenants on their own former properties-or worse yet, as day laborers.
But undaunted, the writer has done three things by way of research methodology that have allowed him to identify where in Richmond County the Joseph Hanks family resided, within a half-mile radius; and to identify the 151-acre tract of land in North Farnham parish in relation to which they were either tenants or immediate neighbors:
1)Using the eighteenth and early-nineteenth century deed books, and modern topographical, survey, and tax-plat maps, he has painstakingly plotted the old boundary lines and many of the home sites of the plantations and other properties in the vicinity, as they were during the 1770's and 1780's.
2)He has superimposed on the resulting circa 1780 land ownership map, as a series of points and small polygons, the places of residence and land ownership of persons associated with Joseph Hanks in the court records of the period. Particular weight has been given to those who were appointed by the court to appraise and personal belongings and estate of Joseph Hanks' mother, and to divide the proceeds from the sale of her personal estate, during the years 1779-82.
3)He has identified the particular five-mile-long road for Joseph Hanks served as road surveyor from 1773-1783.
The result of these plotting is as follows: a constellation of points is formed which composes a rough circle around what was in 1777 a triangular, 151-acre parcel of land. The tract was one of two almost-touching but distinct parcels purchases on December 23 of that year by Griffin Murdock Fauntleroy-the same well-bred planter who was one of Joseph Hanks' employers in 1781. The road for which Joseph Hanks was surveyor (i.e., maintenance inspector) nearly touched this tract of land at the tract's northwestern corner. What is more, the lands owned or leased by the other four court appointees who lived in the neighborhood effectively box in the 151-acre Fauntleroy tract on two of its three sides. Fauntleroy himself, it has been learned, lived on the other of two tracts he purchased in North Farnham Parish in 1777-the one just a little to the east, which bordered on Farnham Creek and Richard Beale's plantation. The 151-acre piece was a less desirable, rather swampy, and largely wooded property.
Teh writer concludes that it is likely-but not certain-that Joseph Hanks and his family resided in the central or western portion of this 151-acre tract of land owned by Hanks' co-employer Griffin Murdock Fauntleroy. But it is certain, in his judgement, taht they lived within half a mile of a point in the north-central portion of that tract. The location is within three miles of the Rappahannock River and the modern community of Sharps. The tract adjoined or was near the back boundaries of several of the grand Rappahannock riverfront plantations of the era: Woodford, Woodberry, Milden Hall, Riverdale, and Hornby Manor-as they were called at that time, or a little later.
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