Transcript of "The Story of Thomas Banks" by Ed Jackson

From “The Story of Thomas Banks” on YouTube

Hello. I'm Ed Jackson I'm standing in front of the old Banks County courthouse in Homer, Georgia. Banks County was created in 1858 and named for Dr. Richard Banks, who was the grandson of Thomas Banks. I'll be your host for this brief look at Thomas Banks, who is considered the father of a number of lines of the Banks’ family in America. This video is part of our efforts to better understand the history and genealogy of the Banks’ family.

Look in the telephone directory of almost any town in America and you'll find people with the name Banks. However, not everyone named Banks is related, although if you go back far enough you may find that many share common ancestors. Today there are over 140,000 people in the United States with the surname Banks. Additionally there are hundreds of thousands of people with other names but who have Banks relatives or ancestors. Identifying someone as the father of the Banks’ family is an impossible task because there is no single Banks’ family in America. Even if there were it would be an arbitrary undertaking since no matter who you pick that person had a father and mother and his parents had fathers and mothers and so on.   

The Banks’ family name was in use in England as early as 1334 and probably even before that. It was variously spelled with an e and without. Most people with the name Banks immigrated to the American colonies from England and Scotland in the 17th and 18th centuries. Despite their shared name many of the different Banks were unrelated. 

One of the early immigrants was William Banks, who sailed from England to Virginia in the 1660s. He purchased land, including a 700-acre site known as Mantapike. William was married to Mary Tunstall and they had four sons. One of these was Ralph, or as they pronounced it “Rafe.” Ralph’s second son was Thomas, who was born in 1709. It is this Thomas Banks who is considered the father of the Banks who settled in Elbert County, Georgia, but as the Banks’ family tree illustrates there were many other Banks who traced their lineage to Thomas's brother William and to Thomas's uncles.

Members of the Banks’ Family Association have a general interest in anyone with a Banks’ surname but they have a special interest in the descendants of Thomas Banks, particularly those who lived in Elbert County, Georgia, in the early 1800s. 

In one sense the story of the Banks of Elbert County begins in 1762. in 1762, King George III was in his second year on the British throne. Initially American colonists celebrated his birthday every year but that would soon change. In 1762 the French and Indian war was winding down. Britain had defeated France and within the year would defeat Spain. This would give Britain large areas of land in America for future colonization but the victory had been terribly expensive for the British government. To pay for the war, the British parliament would impose a series of new taxes on the American colonies. These taxes and the fact that American colonists were not allowed to elect representatives to Parliament would lead to the American Revolution. 

In Virginia in 1762, 53-year-old Thomas Banks sold his house and land holdings and prepared to leave Virginia for good. Who was Thomas Banks? We don't know a lot about him because none of his papers letters journals or other personal accounts survive. What we do know comes from public records, family Bibles, and the research of genealogists and historians. Thomas Banks was born in 1709 at Mantapike in King and Queen County in eastern Virginia. This means that Thomas Banks was 22 years older than George Washington, who was also born in Virginia. After his father's death, Thomas received an inheritance of land in neighboring Carolina County. Here he lived in Saint Margaret's parish for decades. 

Caroline County was divided into three parishes, and Saint Margaret's parish was located west of the Mattaponi River. Here Thomas played a number of roles. One was part-time lawyer; for example, he served as an executor of at least two estates and appraised several others. He operated a tavern, which in his day would have been an important social center for the community. But Thomas Banks’ most important role was landowner and planter. He amassed large land holdings in Caroline County, so clearly he was well off. The cotton gin had not yet been invented so most planters in Virginia and the Carolinas raised tobacco. We know that Thomas Banks owned slaves, though it is not clear how many. In any event he was a successful tobacco planter. 

In 1741, Thomas married Sally Chandler. He was 32 years old at the time of their wedding. They had three children. Unfortunately, Sally died in 1748. Thomas was now a 39-year-old widower with three young children to raise. Thomas was a single father for the next seven years. Around 1755 he married Betty Chandler. Betty was his deceased wife's younger sister. Over the next 19 years, Thomas and Betty would have six children of their own. The first of these, Ralph, would become a partner of his father in Thomas's later years. 

Despite his successful life, Thomas decided to leave Virginia. We can only guess why, but historians have documented that farming techniques in the 18th century quickly exhausted the land, especially in the case of tobacco. Many planters would grow three or four consecutive crops of tobacco in one field then move on in search of fresh land to farm. Most likely Thomas Banks left Caroline County in 1762 because his land was exhausted. Thomas was joined by his wife, Betty, and four living children ranging in age from 5 to 18. At the time, Conestoga wagons were widely used for hauling heavy loads long distances, so in all likelihood they traveled in a Conestoga wagon loaded with all of their belongings. 

This 1751 map shows an old Cherokee Indian path from North Carolina to central Virginia. Since the map shows no other roads in the region, Thomas Banks and his family likely followed this Indian path southward to North Carolina. Conestoga wagons were heavy and bulky and a team of oxen or horses could pull a fully loaded wagon an average of 5 to 15 miles a day, depending on the terrain. 

After traveling a distance of 150 miles or so, Thomas Banks and his family arrived in Granville County, North Carolina, in the summer of 1762. When they reached the Tar River, he found land for sale. As a tobacco planter, he may have seen the river as a way to ship his crop to market. In August 1762, he purchased 253 acres of land on the south side of the Tar River. That sounds like a large area, but 253 acres amounts to less than one half square mile, which was not a lot of land on the frontier. One of the first things Thomas Banks did was to donate land for a church: some accounts say he gave one acre and some accounts say two. Why did Thomas take this action? Probably because the nearest church was 12 miles to the north at Harrisburg. On this land a church was built, probably nothing more than a log building. In recognition of Thomas Banks’ gift, the church was named Banks Chapel. At the time the Church of England was the official church of the American colonies, so Banks Chapel would have been an Anglican church. During the American Revolution, the church became Methodist. Initially known as Banks Chapel Methodist Church, the church's name later was shortened to Banks Methodist Church, and since 1968 its name has been Banks United Methodist Church.

Thomas Banks was a successful planter over the next two decades. His land holdings in Granville County grew from 253 acres to over 2,600. Tax records show that in 1769 he and his eldest son Richard owned nine slaves. Thomas's success as a planter and his legal experience may have led to his appointment as a justice of the peace. 

In 1764, Britain began imposing a series of new taxes on the American colonies to pay for the huge cost of the French and Indian war. Eventually these taxes and lack of representation divided the colonists into two groups, Patriots and Loyalists. During the independence movement, Thomas Banks sided with the Patriots. When war with Britain broke out in 1775, he was 66 which was too old to serve as a soldier, but he continued to serve as a justice of the peace under the new North Carolina state government. 

In April 1776, Thomas was named to a committee to procure arms and ammunition for the Patriots in their fight against the British. After this he apparently played no direct role in the Revolution. After the Revolutionary War, states with the large Indian populations began pressuring the Indians to cede their lands and move west. This was especially true in Georgia. 
 
Around 1780, Betty Banks died, leaving Thomas with four children under age 18. Three years later, he sold 292 acres of his land to a young widow named Susannah Preddy Hurt. In 1784 Thomas Banks sold 1,200 additional acres of his land to two local buyers. He then prepared to leave Granville County for Georgia. Why Georgia? At the end of the Revolutionary War, Georgia was the largest and least populated of the 13 states, and its leaders had adopted land policies to attract new residents. At the time Georgia extended to the Mississippi River, though 90 percent of its lands were occupied by Cherokee, Creek and other Indians, but Georgia authorities were vigorously pushing the Indians to sign treaties ceding their lands. Along the upper Savannah River and in Georgia's interior in eastern Georgia, new counties were formed each time Cherokees and Creeks signed treaties giving up their land. 

Many tobacco farmers in southern states had exhausted their land. However, the Appalachian Mountains served as a physical barrier to traveling westward by covered wagon. As a result, thousands of families from Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas headed southward to Georgia in search of new land to grow tobacco and other crops while land was cheap. 

Georgia offered free land grants to veterans of the Revolutionary War and to others who had aided the Patriot cause at the beginning of the war. Thomas has helped secure arms for Patriot forces and his son Ralph had served as a militia captain during the Revolution, so both qualified for free land grants in Georgia. But Georgia law required that recipients of free land had to actually live on the land for one year. 

There's another reason why Thomas moved to Georgia: his neighbor in Granville County was a young widow named Susannah Preddy Hurt. Despite the large difference in their ages, she was attracted to him. However, Thomas's son Ralph was against their relationship. Ralph urged his father to leave Granville County and go with him to Georgia, where free land was waiting. By now Ralph was 28 years old and Thomas relied on his advice. 

In 1785, Thomas, most of his children, a son-in-law and 16 slaves left Granville County heading south to Georgia. Upon arriving in Georgia, Thomas was awarded 850 acres of land in northeastern Wilkes County and 800 acres in Franklin County. Ralph received 1,800 acres of land in Franklin County and his brother William was given 400 acres.

The land Thomas was awarded in Wilkes County was located along Coldwater Creek. Because he intended to raise tobacco here, his land became known as Coldwater Plantation. Initially there was no place to live, so likely Thomas and his sons built several log houses as a temporary residences for them and their slaves. 

Thomas Banks was now 76 years of age. Although he was a grandfather, he still had two young sons to raise. This may have convinced him that he needed a wife, so Thomas decided to return to Granville County and asked Susannah Hurt to marry him. Despite Ralph’s opposition to the marriage, he accompanied his father on the long trip. On his arrival Susannah accepted Thomas's proposal, and on March 12, 1786, they married. 

After their marriage, Thomas and Susannah sold her land in Granville County. Then they left for Coldwater Plantation in Georgia. After one year they decided to return to North Carolina. Perhaps Susannah was homesick or maybe life on the frontier was harder than she had expected. In any event, in 1787, Thomas, Susannah and Ralph left for North Carolina, where they would live for the next two years.

Thomas's oldest son, Richard, lived in Wake County. which lay immediately south of Granville County. Richard was a successful planter with large land holdings and 12 slaves. Because Thomas and Susannah had earlier sold their land holdings in Granville County they and Ralph likely lived with Richard during their two-year stay in North Carolina. In March 1788, Thomas and Susannah celebrated their second anniversary. Whether a coincidence or not she became pregnant that same month. Amazingly, at age 79, Thomas had fathered his 10th and final child. This is even more remarkable because relatively few people in the 18th century lived to their 70s. In fact, in 1800 the average life expectancy for males in the U.S. was 36. 

During this visit to North Carolina, Ralph met 19-year-old Rachel Jones, who lived in Wake County. We're not sure how they met but it may have been through the efforts of his sister Justine or his half-brother Richard, both of whom lived in Wake County. In any event Ralph and Rachel Jones married on November 27, 1788. After Ralph’s wedding, Thomas and Ralph made plans to return to Georgia. Apparently there was a sense of urgency: 200 acres of land adjacent to Coldwater Plantation was being offered for sale. Thomas's son William wanted to buy the land. 

William was 22 and probably needed to borrow the money from his father for the purchase or he may have needed his father to co-sign for a loan. In any case the chance to expand the size of Coldwater Plantation was important to the family so Thomas and Ralph prepared to head back to Wilkes County to help William complete the purchase of land bordering Coldwater Plantation. 

Thomas faced a quandary: should he take his pregnant wife with him back to Georgia or should Susannah stay behind in Wake County and come back later? It's hard to believe he would leave Susannah behind to give birth without him being present. Also if he left her behind how would she and her newborn infant get to Georgia? On the other hand, Susannah was eight months pregnant—how could she travel 350 miles in a covered wagon? Also, she was due in late December, meaning if she accompanied Thomas she would probably give birth during the month-long trip. If she stayed behind in Wake County, she would have access to a doctor as well as family members to help before and after the delivery. We believe that Thomas decided to let Susannah stay behind in Wake County with his son Richard and that he Ralph and Rachel left for Georgia in early December 1788. We know for sure that on January 10, 1789, both Thomas and Ralph were back in Wilkes County to witness William's purchase of land adjacent to Coldwater Plantation.

Back in Wake County, North Carolina, Susannah gave birth to a son two days before Christmas of 1788. He was named Thomas after his father. As soon as her infant son was old enough to travel, Susannah left Wake County to rejoin her husband in Georgia. We believe that Thomas's oldest son Richard took them by covered wagon to Coldwater Plantation. At the time Richard was 44, and though he was older than Susannah, technically she was his stepmother.

Shortly after Susannah was reunited with her husband at Coldwater Plantation, Thomas Banks died at age 80. After his death, Richard and Ralph were named co-executors of his will. This suggests that it was Richard who brought Susannah back from Wake County and that he was in Wilkes County when his father died. 

Thomas's death occurred on June 28, 1789, two months after George Washington was sworn in as the nation's first president. There has been confusion as to where Thomas died and was buried. This traces to a 1972 search for his grave by Sarah Banks Franklin. She was working on a new edition of her 1937 book, “Banks of Elbert County.” In that book she had written that Thomas Banks died at Ralph’s home in Georgia, but she was unable to find Thomas’ grave at Coldwater Plantation. So she traveled to Granville County, North Carolina, to try and locate it there. If Thomas were buried in Granville County he probably would have been buried in the Banks Methodist Church cemetery because of his ties to the church, so that's where Sarah Banks began her search. But she didn't find his grave there or in any other cemetery, so Sarah Banks began looking for relatives of Thomas's third wife Susannah Preddy Banks to see if anyone knew where his grave was located. She found Alberta Preddy, who told her that she had always heard that Thomas and Susannah were buried in a small family cemetery located in the woods on private property. Sarah Banks was unable to visit the cemetery but she accepted Alberta Preddy's account as the best available evidence. 

So Sarah Banks Franklin wrote in her new edition of “Banks of Elbert” that Thomas Banks died in Granville County and was buried there. Sarah Banks was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. After her 1972 trip to Granville County, she submitted paperwork to obtain a DAR historical marker for the Banks United Methodist Church. The marker was dedicated in 1974 based on Sarah Banks’ interview with Alberta Preddy two years earlier. The marker states that Thomas died in Granville County and was buried in the Preddy cemetery. It also states that his wife Susannah is buried alongside Thomas. There are no gravestones in the Preddy cemetery marking Thomas or Susannah's grave, so Sarah Banks obtained a DAR grave marker for Thomas and placed it in the cemetery in 1974. 

As a result of her book and the DAR markers many genealogists have accepted as fact that Thomas died and was buried in Granville County. In reality, Thomas died at his Georgia home on June 28, 1789. He was buried in a small plot behind the house, becoming the first known person to be buried at Coldwater Plantation. While two gravestones still stand in the family cemetery today, Thomas Banks’ gravestone, if he had one, is not one of them. Most likely his grave did not have a stone marker. At the time of his death there were no quarries or stone cutters in Wilkes County. On the frontier burials were simple, with many graves marked by a wooden plaque. 

Why do we believe that Thomas Banks is buried at Coldwater Plantation? This was his home and this is where he died, and in America embalming was not yet in use, and that process would have been necessary to send Thomas’ body on a month-long trip back to Granville County. His will was probated in Wilkes County and most important, one of his grandsons later recounted that family members told him about Thomas’ burial at Coldwater. 

After Thomas's death, Richard Banks took Susannah and her infant son back with him to North Carolina. On their return, he was named guardian of Thomas Jr., who was his half-brother. At some point Susannah moved to Granville County. There in 1799, she married Archibald Byron. After he died in 1808, Susannah moved to Tennessee, where she died in the 1840s. 

The year after Thomas's death, the Georgia legislature created two new counties. One was named for Revolutionary War hero Samuel Elbert. The area of Wilkes County containing Coldwater Plantation became part of Elbert County. 

Thus ends the story of Thomas Banks. His name appears in few history books but his legacy continues today. While he is remembered as the father of the “Banks of Elbert” in actuality his progeny is much larger. During his three marriages he fathered a total of 10 children. Most of them married, had children and began their own family lines that traced back to Thomas. 

His legacy can also be seen in Granville County, North Carolina. Here on State Road 96, the Banks United Methodist Church is still active today. The building you see behind me was built in 1911, but it stands on the grounds where the original Banks chapel was built. In 2012, the church celebrated the 250th anniversary of Thomas Banks’ gift of land for the church. To help mark the two-day event, the Banks’ family association held its 2012 reunion in Granville County, North Carolina. Here you see family members attending the Sunday morning worship service in Elbert County, Georgia. 

The old Coldwater Plantation house still exists. As you can see behind me, this is not the temporary residence built by Thomas Banks and his sons in 1785, but it is the historic plantation home we believe was built in the early 1800s. Since 1978, Coldwater Plantation has been on the National Register of Historic Places.

Today descendants of Thomas Banks are found across the United States, although most live in the Southeast. Together with the related families many are members of the Banks Family Association. For a half century, association members have held reunions at the Coldwater Creek Methodist Church in Elbert County and at sites across the South that have ties to the Banks family. Here you see Banks family members at an old south ball in Columbus, Mississippi, and here are family members at the John Banks family cemetery plot in Columbus Georgia. Association members also have undertaken genealogical research on the Banks family and financially supported various projects to keep alive the legacy of Thomas Banks and his descendants, such as this monument to Ralph and Rachel Banks and their 14 children erected at Coldwater Methodist Church in Elbert County. If you're not a member of the Banks Family Association and would like to be part of our efforts to preserve the heritage of the Banks’ family and affiliated families, we invite you to visit our website for information on joining. Banks Family Association http://www.banksfamilyassociation.org