Genealogy, Inspiration and a Christmas Novella Part II: Reverend Thomas Hanks

Among some Texas Baptists, the Reverend Thomas Hanks, a circuit-riding preacher from the Primitive Baptist Church, is famous for obtaining  “the first conversion” on the west side of the Brazos River. He had begun sneaking into Texas when it was still a Mexican state, baptizing, marrying and preaching to the English-speakers in the neighborhood possibly as early as 1820. He baptized a woman at Moses Shipman’s house and walked into history.

Catholicism was the state religion and no other faiths were tolerated. Most of the Americans, however, who moved to Texas (at the encouragement of Mexico) were not Catholic. They may have kept their heads down with the authorities, but they welcomed a man preaching from the Protestant Bible all the same, particularly if they wanted to get married.

Despite the potential danger of being arrested if caught, Hanks married a number of couples–keeping track of who, when and where.

Once Texas became a Republic, he returned to the isolated farms to remarry them all.

One woman, ten hard years into a challenging marriage heard him out when he stopped by their claim and offered to legally marry them. She frowned and looked into the distance, finally saying, “Well, okay, Daddy Hanks. I’ll do it just because it’s you that’s doing the asking. But if I’d known then what I know now, I’d never have married him.”

Do you see how that gave me insight into my ancestor–from whom the story obviously came? An adventurer, not afraid to share the Gospel in an illegal situation, and probably with a sense of humor.

This story encouraged the fictional plot of “The Dogtrot Christmas.” I imagine old Tom had to stay somewhere, so I gave him a relationship with a Tejano family that provided a perfectly legitimate alibi. It also provided the spiritual meat of the story.

Because “The Dogtrot Christmas” is a romance, I needed to find some hooks to link in the history with my fictional story.

When Texas became a Republic, Thomas Hanks loaded up his family and some neighbors and brought them on a wagon train trip to the new promised land. His youngest daughter, Cynthia “Syntha” Hanks Faires, wife of James Faires, unfortunately died in childbirth along the way.

I invented a character: Molly Faires, a sister for Jamie. In my story, she raises her baby nephew, deals with the Native Americans, and helps put together the dogtrot homestead.

She also enjoys Rev. Thomas Hanks’ preaching at a camp revival meeting and along the way falls in love with a native Tejano–fourth generation Spaniard on a land grant–who just happened to be tutored by the Rev. Hanks during those spying-out-the-land-for-the-Gospel visits.

Because my fictional character Molly was an orphan, I was able to give her a connection to her brother’s in-laws that provides the heart of the story.

How did these people live out their spiritual lives on the frontier?

I took what I knew about circuit-riding and Hanks’ pioneer spirit and tailored it to the circumstances and beliefs of the people during that time. It had to be true to the early 19th century, but the Word of God is eternal and profitable no matter when in history a believer lives. Figuring out how people of faith related to their God was straight forward–and even easier when I found hymns sung at camp meetings!

Away Up in the Sky