Finally Finding Francis
A MEMBER OF THE SUPREME CIRCLEFRANCIS HANKSDIED JULY 6 1902AT RESTFrancis “Fannie” Terrell Mason Hanks was my great-great-great-great grandmother, and she is easily my toughest genealogical “brick wall.” I recently discovered the location of her final resting place in Clay County, Georgia, somewhat ending my long quest to find out what became of her. There is still a lot that I don’t know, and to this day I have come across only one of her descendants that knew her name before I discovered it. I believe this is due to four main reasons:
1) It appears that Francis had a limited role in raising her children.
2) Francis had two granddaughters that were murdered by their husbands, causing several cases of orphanhood.
3) Francis had a mother-in-law also named Frances/Fannie Hanks.
4) The younger brother of Francis’ second husband married her oldest daughter, Lucy.
This side of my family couldn’t possibly be more confusing. I truly don’t blame me and my family for not knowing this information.
In 2016, I discovered the name of my great-great grandmother Chesta Anna Powell and her mother Mary Reynolds, but that’s where that line stopped. Both ladies died in the 1920s and there is no one alive that knew them. Mary’s death record has yet to be obtained. Her maiden name was recorded as Mason on her marriage license, but as Terrell on her daughter’s death certificate. She was enumerated as a 10-year-old on the 1880 census with both surnames and no parents! DNA evidence supported that Mary was the granddaughter of Albert Terrell, the patriarch of all Terrells from Early County, Georgia. After years of confusion, I stumbled upon a marriage license for Fannie Terrill and Tom Mason. Finally, something started to make sense, and I began to put together the story of Francis.
Francis Terrell Hanks was born around 1850 to Albert and Harriet Terrell, most likely enslaved on the plantation of Joseph Grimsley in Early County, Georgia. When Joseph died in 1860, Francis was not listed on his estate inventory with her parents and siblings. It is possible that she was sold as a young girl to serve a different family. She had 10 children, but only appears on a census record with four of them. Her known children were Lucy Hanks, Mary Reynolds, Sandy Mason, Ella Holmes, Lillie Bland, Albert Hanks, Hattie Bailey, and Daniel Hanks. She also had several siblings: Sam Terrell, Daniel Terrell, Isaac Terrell, Alice Carter, Elsie Jenkins, Neptune Terrell, Thurcy Tull, Nettie Fryer, Susan Hollinger, Ceily Norflet, Clara Chapman, George Terrell, and more.
Francis was first married on July 31st, 1869 to Thomas Mason.
Her second marriage was to Jesse Hanks on May 4th, 1878.
Francis gave birth to her first child at the age of 15. Her name was Lucy and she lived from 1865 to 1947. In 1882, Lucy married her step-father’s younger brother Thomas Hanks. They had at least 17 children, but only six lived to adulthood. Their names were Ealie Johnson, Adam Hanks, Bertha Lee Jackson, Theresa Stringer, Fannie Mae Reynolds, and Leola Williams. Cousin Ealie has two daughters still alive. The younger one is 98 years old and she took a DNA test. I was able to look at her matches to determine that John Early Duce was the biological father of Lucy Hanks. John was a white man, and Aunt Lucy was said to have had very light skin. It has not yet been determined how John met Francis, especially since he was a Confederate soldier around the time Lucy should’ve been conceived. I ordered Aunt Lucy’s death certificate from the State of Georgia in 2020. Her father was recorded as unknown, and her mother was recorded as Francis Mason. The informant was her daughter, Leola Williams.
Francis was enumerated in Cuthbert, Georgia on the 1870 Census with her first husband Thomas, her oldest child Lucy, and a newborn named Edger V. Absolutely nothing is known about Edger. This could be my ancestor Mary, since name changes were very common in this family, but there is no way to know for sure. Mary could’ve been born later in 1870 or even early 1871. Francis has not yet been found in the 1880 census, but I found Mary recorded as a servant in the household of Edgar Allen West, a white man.
Mary was apparently using her mother’s maiden name as well as her father’s last name, and the inclusion of both on this record is pretty extraordinary. She was living in Clay County, Georgia, near McElvey’s Mill (now called Harrison’s Mill). In the same community was her step-father Jesse Hanks, Jr., his father and siblings, Francis’ siblings Daniel, Nettie, and Susan, and even Mary’s future husband, Benjamin Reynolds. They were married on October 31, 1885 and had 14 children. Those that lived to adulthood were Chesta Anna Powell, Ethel Hutchins, Sylvester Reynolds, Leola Hamilton, William Reynolds, Mollie Reynolds, Robert Reynolds, Louise Redden, and Eva Bass. Mary died December 30th, 1925, in Newark, New Jersey.
The only other unaccounted for Mason in this area during the 1880 census was Francis’ oldest son, Sanders Mason, more commonly recorded as Sandy Mason. Uncle Sandy never had children, and I’ve never spoken to anyone that remembers him, but his public records gave me the most evidence towards proving the existence of Francis. He was first recorded as the “house boy” for Samuel Tull, who was married to Thurcy Terrell, Francis’ sister. In 1918, Sandy registered for the WWI Draft and named his oldest sister Lucy as his nearest relative, even though he had moved to Florida.
And in the 1940 census, he was actually living with Lucy’s daughter Leola Williams in Clay County, Georgia, where he is explicitly recorded as an uncle. He might have been staying there because he was sick, but somehow he got back to Florida where he died on November 10th, 1940. The informant on his death certificate was a neighbor that didn’t know his parents’ names.
Uncle Sandy was the last confirmed child of Thomas and Francis Mason. It appears that Tom and Francis split up around 1873 and both remarried. Francis married Jesse Hanks, Jr. in 1878. Jesse Jr. had already been married to Mary “Mallie” Low, and they had several children. He clearly took after his father, as Jesse Sr. was also married to women named Mary and Francis. Just to make things even more confusing, neither of them have wives named Francis on the 1880 census. Jesse Sr. had a wife named Missouri, and Jesse Jr. was there with his first wife, even though he had married Francis two years earlier. One of the two households in between the two Jesses was that of Edgar Allen West, the white man who had Francis’ daughter Mary Mason as a child servant.
Jesse Jr. was never enumerated on a census with Francis or their children. He was listed as an heir of Jesse Hanks, Sr. in a property deed from 1894, but likely died before the 1900 census. Some of his children were living with his brother Thomas “Tommie” Hanks, who was married to Francis’ oldest daughter Lucy. One of them was named Ella, and she was likely the first child between Jesse Jr. and Francis.
Ella’s birth month was reported as May of 1878, the same month her parents were married. She was first married to George Clark in 1902, then to Cleveland Holmes in 1908. (Cleveland was the son of my ancestor Clem Horn, so their children are my double cousins.) Ella had six children that lived to adulthood: Willie J. Holmes, Ulysses Holmes, Hattie Mae Bonner, Milton Holmes, Wallace Holmes, and Wilkie Holmes. She died in 1965, and I ordered her death certificate in 2020. It confirmed that her parents were Jesse Hanks and Francis Terrell.
Francis’ next child was Lillie, and they were enumerated together on the 1900 census in Clay County, Georgia. Lillie was born in 1882 and married Will Bland in 1903. Further records of them have yet to be discovered, but DNA evidence supports that they had one son named David Bland.
Francis named her next child Albert, after her father. It was his daughter who told me that Albert Hanks and Ella Holmes were siblings, and that their mother’s name was Francis Hanks. Albert Hanks was raised in Randolph County, Georgia in the household of Reverend William L. Stratten. He was married to Maud Carter, Ada Smith, and Lucille Clark. He had over 30 children, and six of them are still alive today. He was born on April 15th, 1883 and died in January of 1973, according to the Social Security Death Index. Other records indicate that he was 5-10 years older than that. I support the 1883 birth year because of his parents’ marriage date and the birth years of their other children. If Albert Hanks was born in 1883, he was 72 years old at the time his youngest child was born. I ordered his Social Security Application in 2021, which confirmed the names of his parents.
Albert Hanks’ daughter also told me that her father had a sister named Hattie. This confirmed information I already had from the 1900 census, where Francis was living in Bluffton, Georgia with two daughters named Lillie and Hattie. Hattie was likely named after Francis’ mother, Harriet. She was born in July of 1884 and died in 1960. Hattie married Ed Richardson in 1904 and they had three children: Nelson Richardson, Francis Richardson, and Albert Richardson. Reverend William Stratten performed Hattie’s first marriage. She later married Elbert Bailey.
Finally, Francis gave birth to her baby boy Daniel Hanks in November of 1888. He was named after her brother. Daniel was living in the home of his uncle and sister Tommie and Lucy Hanks in the 1900 census. He was first married to Willie Mae Lowe in 1907, and the marriage was performed by Rev. William Stratten. That marriage did not work out, and Daniel married Gertrude Thomas in 1909. They moved to Philadelphia, where Gertrude died from pneumonia in 1922. Daniel went back home to Fort Gaines, Georgia and married Ophelia Johnson. He brought her back up north, where they had two children: Daniel Jr. and Eugene. By 1930, they had settled in Middletown, Delaware where they lived the rest of their lives. Daniel Sr. died in 1962. His Social Security Application confirms (in a phonetic monosyllabic way) that his mother was Francis Terrell.
Francis reported on the 1900 census that she gave birth to 10 children, and that nine of them were still alive. For the past 2 years, that’s been essentially all I knew about her, until I found her gravesite. Now I know that she was loved and taken care of. She might have been a member of Mount Calvary Baptist Church where she is buried. She was certainly a member of The Supreme Circle of Benevolence, a fraternal organization that made sure its members were buried in dignity. She has always meant a lot to me, especially since she’s a direct matrilineal ancestor, but she means even more now that I know a bit about her life. It may be confusing, but I’m very proud to tell her story. I finally found Francis.
