Thomas Hanks

     Thomas Hanks was born before 1630 in England.¹ The name of his wife was probably Elizabeth.^1,2 He died circa 1675 in Gloucester County, Virginia.¹
     
     Thomas Hanks (Hank, Hancks, Hankes, Hanckes) was probably born between the years 1620-30 in or near the village of Malmesbury in Wiltshire, England. However, there is no real proof of when or where in England he was born. Almost all that is known of Thomas in America has been gleaned from Virginia land records, and to understand the significance of those records, a basic knowledge of headrights and indentured servitude is important:

     By 1620, the Virginia Company had organized an effective system that enabled poorer Englishmen to sail for America. By law, any person who settled in Virginia or paid for the transportation expenses of another person who settled in Virginia should be entitled to receive fifty acres of land for each immigrant. Grantees had to pay annual quitrents (a kind of real estate tax), and "plant and seat" the land in order to keep it. The right to receive fifty acres per person, or per head, was called a headright. The practice was continued under the royal government of Virginia after the dissolution of the Virginia Company, and the Privy council ordered on 22 July 1634 that patents for headrights be issued.

     A person who was entitled to a headright usually obtained a certificate of entitlement from a county court and then took the certificate to the office of the secretary of the colony, who issued the headright, or right to patent fifty acres of land. The holder of the headright then had the county surveyor make a survey of the land and then took the survey and the headright back to the capital to obtain a patent for the tract of land. When the patent was issued, the names of the immigrants, or headrights, were often included in the text of the document.

     As valuable properties, headrights could be bought and sold. The person who obtained a patent to a tract of land under a headright might not have been the person who immigrated or who paid for the immigration of another person. Headrights were not always claimed immediately after immigration, either; there are instances in which several years elapsed between a person's entry into Virginia and the acquisition of a headright and sometimes even longer between then and the patenting of a tract of land.

     The headright system was subject to a wide variety of abuses from outright fraud to multiple claims by a merchant and a ship's captain to a headright for the same immigrant passenger. Some prominent merchants and colonial officials received headrights for themselves each time they returned to Virginia from abroad. As a result of the abuses and of the transferable nature of the headrights, the system, which may have been intended initially to promote settlement and ownership of small plots of land by numerous immigrants, resulted in the accumulation of large tracts of land by a small number of merchants, shippers, and early land speculators.

     The presence of a name as a headright in a land patent, then, establishes that a person of a certain name had entered Virginia prior to the date of the patent; but it does not prove when the person immigrated or who was initially entitled to the headright.

     Indentured servants were men, women, and sometimes children who signed a contract with a master to serve a term of four to seven years. In exchange for their service, the indentured servants received their passage paid from England, as well as food, clothing, and shelter once they arrived in the colonies. Some were even paid a salary. When the contract expired, the servant was paid freedom dues of corn, tools, and clothing, and was allowed to leave the plantation. During the time of his indenture, however, the servant was considered his master's personal property and his contract could be inherited or sold. Prices paid for indentured servants varied depending on skills.

     While under contract a person could not marry or have children. A master's permission was needed to leave the plantation, to perform work for anyone else, or to keep money for personal use. An unruly indentured servant was whipped or punished for improper behavior. Due to poor living conditions, hard labor, and difficulties adjusting to new climates and native diseases, many servants did not live to see their freedom. Often servants ran away from their masters. Since they spoke English, were white, and had specific job skills, runaway indentured servants were not as easily caught as were runaway black slaves. If runaway servants were captured, they were punished by increasing their time of service.

     Most Hanks historians agree that Thomas had arrived in Virginia by 1644 and was among the estimated 75% or more of Virginia's settlers in the seventeenth century who came as indentured servants. There was widespread unemployment and civil war in England at that time, and young, poor, but often skilled workers saw America as the Land of Opportunity. Thomas was very likely among that class who was impressed by recruiters with promises of land in Virginia and other benefits for several years of servitude. However, at least one researcher speculates that he was a soldier in Lord Cromwell's army, was taken prisoner and transported to Virginia.

     Whatever the case, Thomas was one of 27 headrights belonging to Thomas Fowke, a merchant of Westmoreland County, on a patent dated 10 June 1654. That, however, doesn't prove in any way when he arrived in the colony or that he was indentured to Fowke. In fact, no record of his indenture has been found, and it is evident he had been in Virginia for a number of years before Fowke claimed to have transported him. The proof is that the previous year, on 16 February 1653, Thomas claimed two headrights of his own in Gloucester County for transporting Joane Litefoot and John Range. Whether these were servants whose labor and headrights he had acquired together, or whether he bought the headrights separately, is not known.

     Later that year, on 27 September 1653, also in Gloucester County, Thomas Hanks was a witness to the will of Robert Mascall, and by that will inherited 'one young sow, marked on both ears with the Swallow forke.' The gift of the young sow was probably something more than a neighborly courtesy, as young swine were then highly desirable.³

     Gloucester County was a new county formed in 1651 from York County. One side of Thomas' 100 acres was bounded by a stream called, in the patent, 'Hanckes Branch' which would appear to indicate that he had already been for some time a resident of the locality. Hanckes' Branch seems from the description in the patent to have flowed from the northwest into a swamp along the "Southeast side" of the Mattopony River. This river flows southeasterly, but curves southwesterly at one point. This swamp was to the left of where the river curves. This would have been the area just above the present day West Point, where the Mattopony and Pawmunkey rivers join to form the York River. Thomas' land extended northeast towards the Rappahannock River, where his holdings eventually reached.

     Another important transaction was recorded on 10 February 1654. There lived in what was then Lancaster County, but on the South side of the Rappahannock, Abraham Moone, whose land holdings amounted to 10,500 acres. The greater part of this land had been bought in 1651 and 1653, but Moone was still buying land in 1654. Apparently he was elderly and in poor health, for he leased for three years to Thomas Hanks "The plantation whereon I now live," consisting of 300 acres with his house, four servants and one mare, reserving for himself and wife, one servant and a room in the house. As one of the servants had nearly served his time, Moone agreed to furnish another servant when the time of that one had expired. For this he acknowledged receipt of 16,000 pounds of tobacco in casks - a sizable transaction for the day. Thomas Moone did not live long after the lease was made. Early in 1655 his will was presented for probate, and was recorded February 20th, a year and ten days after making the lease.

     There was an enormous demand in England for timber to build ships at that time, and other by-products such as tar, turpentine and resinous materials were also needed. By the wording of the lease, it appears that Thomas leased the land for its good stand of timber:

Further I do grant unto the sd Thomas Hanks the benefit and privlidge of my whole Dividant of land whereon I am seated for the benefit of timber or any other privlidges whatsoever.
     Abraham Moone
     In the presence of
     John Buckner & Erasmus Chamby"³

     Ten years later, Thomas began to expand his land holdings. His real estate was, from the legal descriptions, mostly of timberland. Over time he acquired enough acreage to extend his boundary line northeasterly to the Rappahannock River, where he possibly had a boat landing of his own. Thomas became a relatively large landowner, amassing various tracts of land totaling in excess of 2400 acres of timberland in Gloucester and New Kent counties. He leased a further 800 acres from Abraham Moone on Moraticon Creek in the Northern Neck area. How much of this land was held at any one particular time is uncertain. During this period of time, there was a great demand for labor to clear the forests and till the land. Thomas Hanks seems to have sponsored a number of indentured servants for that purpose.^3,4

     It is thought that Thomas probably lost all of his land in Bacon's Rebellion due to confiscation. Although Bacon and his men were called rebels, there probably was some justification for their actions. They did not originally rebel against Berkley who until then was not a tyrant, but rather to his lack of protecting the planters, thier families and farms against an Indian uprising that occurred in 1675 along this northern frontier. Bacon then, without Berkley's consent, called for volunteers to join with him and they defeated the Indians. Then Berkley, vain of his authority, visiously attacked Bacon and his men, and was defeated. Bacon died near the home of Thomas Hanks, 1 October 1676 and his supporters dissolved their unity. Venting a venomous revenge, Berkley then confiscated the lands and farms of Bacon's supporters and passed them to his own, banishing their families. Berkley was recalled by the King and soon died.

     Thomas Hanks resided in the very area that was overrun by the Indians and fought over by the Berkley Troops. Within two weeks after the Indian Massacres started, sixty plantations had been burned and the families ravaged and killed. Likely the house and farmstead was burned by the Indians. If his lands were confiscated by Berkley, there would be no record of the rascality. Or if he died a natural death and there were probate records, the actions of the War Between the States and courthouse fires eliminated them. At least there are no further records.³