The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1927-05-12

for Richmond county, at first l sup
posed it was the county of which the
City of Richmond was county seat.
But it is a rural county at the lower
end of the Northern Neck. 1t still
has no railway.
After a while I discovered that
these entries in three counties were
really all in one locality, which was
shuttlecocked from county to county.
And began to want to go there.
After some delays on account of
roads and my other engagements, l
did go, and l was able to secure rath-
er surprisingly good assistance.
But where and when was Nancy
Hanks born?
Abraham Lincoln said his mother
was born in Virginia, was in her
twenty-third year when she married
his father. She was born in the latter
part of 1888 or the first part of 1884.
That is positively all we know. The
other dates were manufactured to or
der and are wholly unreliable.
Was the family of Joseph Hanks
in Richmond county in 1888 or 1884?
They were not there then, but had
not been gone long. Joseph was adj
ministrator of his mothers estate,
which was settled in 1882, but he had
already moved, and came back from
somewhere to file his final papers.
Where did he go and come back from?
l hope not every author knows how
much free labor he can get out of the
Government of the United States, and
l suspect that the Census Bureau gets
as little public credit as any branch
of the Government. May the Lord
bless the Census Bureau for what
they have done for me!
1t had not occurred to me to ask
that bureau to find the family of Jo-
seph Hanks in 1874, for l knew that
family was in Richmond county, Va,
in 1881, and in Kentucky before 1890,
and the first United States census was
made in 1890. But now came one of
those miracles no one could have pre-
dicted. The Virginia enumeration in
cluded certain data collected in 1882
and 1884. Joseph Hanks, white, with
a family of eleven, was in Hampshire
county, Va, in the new section on
Patterson's Creek, in 1882, and was
gone in 1884.
In that enumeration there was no
division as to age or sex. But here
were Joseph and Ann Hanks and
their nine children a hundred miles
away from where anybody had ever
imagined they had ever been.
Removed to Kentucky.
then wrote to the Clerk of Hamp-
shire county for records and could
find only two. Joseph Hanks had a
good title to his land, albeit the land
was not paid for in full, and he mort
gagged his farm in March, 1884, for
pitiful sum, paid by thrifty Penn
SYLVAN German neighbor, Peter Put
man, and the whole Hanks family
FASTENED away to Kentucky.
The clerk wrote that there were
positively no more records, but I
wanted to go to Hampshire county. I
had notion that might discover the
actual birthplace of the Presidents
mother. l was able to make a fairly
good map of the farm 1t adjoined
the farm of Peter Putnam, which lay
along Patterson's Creek, at the mouth
of Mikes Run.
The United States Geological Sur
vey had furnished me with large scale
maps, and I had large number of
descriptive data. One morning at
o'clock I started out in a car from the
Ford garage, and appropriately the
car was Lincoln. We followed the
road as l described it, and my rough
maps and the good ones from Wash
ington told me all I needed to know.
We found Mikes Run, really pretty
stream, though bearing plebeian
name. The Putnam house, now the
Arnold house, was just where I ex-
pected. We found the old road and
turned up Mikes Run as far as the
heavy car could go.
We found the foundation stones of
the home of Joseph Hanks, and the
spring from which his family obtain
ed water. 1t was above the forks and
between the forks of Mikes Run, a
"drain," or as the deed called it a
"dreen," of Patterson Creek.
This information, first published in
the New York Times in February,
1925, and shortly afterwards in my
"Life of Lincoln" naturally created
some local interest, which crystallized
into the movement to rebuild the cab
in, out of log buildings in the vicin-
age, and place it on it's original foun-
dation, to clear and beautify the
spring, and make a practicable road
to the spot.
On Tuesday, April 10, an invited