page 1487

Although one can trace most of the Bankses of New England to non-Puritan, mid-1600s emigrants to York, Maine, and Fairfield County, Connecticut, Nathaniel Banks's origins are indistinct. Once the Puritans established themselves in Massachusetts in the mid-1600s, there was little additional in-migration there for a century because of the religious intolerance in that colony. The first confirmed appearance of General Nathaniel Banks's grandfather, John Banks, in the records was in 1775 when a deed listed him as then living in Grafton, Worcester County, Massachusetts. At that time he was purchasing land in Alstead, Cheshire County, New Hampshire.¹ In the voluminous Nathaniel Banks manuscript collections there is no surviving discussion of John's ancestry.

Several descendants of another Banks family from Massachusetts independently claimed to be cousins of General Banks. The oldest man in that family was William Banks. In 1750 this William married in Rutland, Worcester County, Massachusetts.² He was in the records there until 1765, afterwards in nearby Oakham. Grafton is not adjacent to either Oakham or Rutland, but it is on the opposite side of the city of Worcester. This William Banks married for a second time in 1779 in Keene, Cheshire County, New Hampshire, and began appearing in the deed records there. Thus both William and John Banks both migrated from Worcester County to Cheshire County at about the same time.

A descendant of this William Banks's son, Israel Banks, claimed to be a cousin of General Nathaniel P. Banks.³ Another descendant of William's son, Edward Banks, similarly claimed she was a cousin.⁴

^{1. Cheshire Co., NH. Deed Book 23, p.
76.
2. Vital Records of Rutland, Massachusetts to the End of
the Year 1849
3. Information from Ann Noyes, citing the statement
of Israel's daughter Amanda Banks Burr. This information was
conveyed to Amanda's descendant, Ruth Burr Stevens of Royal Oak, Michigan,
and finally provided to Ann Noyes in 1979.

4. Information again from Ann Noyes, citing Emma
Josephine Banks White's
(1847-1942)}

page 1488

Yet another child of William Banks was Azubah Banks Wheeler. A descendant in that line indicated that William came to the American colonies from England when he was fifteen years old.⁵ This latter statement has to be approached cautiously because undocumented pre-1800 ancestral information is error-prone. Nevertheless, there were also Bankses in England with the same given names of William and John who were born to the same father and had the same general birth years as William and John Banks of Massachusetts and New Hampshire.⁶

There were actually very few Bankses in Massachusetts prior to the American Revolution. This William Banks of Worcester and Cheshire Counties does also closely match a William Banks baptized on June 17, 1733, at Old South Church in Boston, Massachusetts. He was son of John and Sarah (Gwin) Banks.⁷ This John was likely the one in Boston records, listed as a distiller and then goldsmith. In turn, this latter John Banks was probably son of the earlier cooper of the same name and his wife Mehitabel Mattox, who were in Boston as early as the late 1600s.

This distiller John Banks also had a son named John Banks. Other than a marriage to Elizabeth Grusey in 1744 and attendance at Boston's New North Church, the youngest John left few traces of his existence. John apparently did not have a skill because self-employed persons commonly applied to Boston courts to collect debts. John did not. The various records show John and Elizabeth had at least six children: Elizabeth, John, Priscilla, Mary, Thomas and Hannah. If the parentage of these children is correctly matched, most of the children soon became waifs housed in the Boston almshouse. The child John in this household is a candidate for General Banks's grandfather if all this identifying information is correct. At least one of the almshouse boys, Thomas Banks, was indentured to a farmer in western Massachusetts.⁸

Conclusions about these relationships clearly must remain tentative. DNA testing of descendants may offer clarification. Unfortunately, there do not seem to be any surviving male Bankses descended from Nathaniel's grandfather. Any such men would be excellent candidates for Y-chromosome testing.

^{statement. Emma lived in the
same household in Duxbury, Massachusetts, with Ann Noyes for some
time. Ann called her "Gramma Josie."

5. Information from
Margaret Henner of Illinois as provided to William Banks's descendant Ruth
Burr Stevens of Royal Oak, Michigan. Ms. Henner did seemingly have a
correct birth date for Azubah in this note, which gives it some additional
credence.

6. For example, there was a William Banks baptized
November 5, 1735 and a John Banks baptized August 8, 1744, both to a father
named Thomas Banks and both in St. John's Parish, Leeds,
Yorkshire.

7. Records of Old South Church, Boston, p.
166. LDS Church microfilm reel 856694.
8. New England
Ancestors, (Winter 2003):
23.}