Thomas Shanks (July 15, 1796 – May 7, 1849) was an American slave owner and politician who won three elections to represent Botetourt County in the Virginia House of Delegates.
[2] Nearly a decade later, in 1837, Botetourt County voters elected Shanks once again as one of their delegates, this time alongside Whig and fellow slaveowner William M. Peyton,[3] and re-elected both men that fall, although the following year a census realignment cut the county's representation to just one man, Joseph Hannah.
[4] Thomas Shanks may have been a merchant (or even a slave trader), for the New and Comprehensive Gazetteer of Virginia published by Joseph Martin in 1835 described six mercantile establishments in Fincastle, as well as 3 churches and 260 homes.
[6] In the 1840 U.S. Federal census, the last before his death as well as the last before listing occupations, Thomas Shanks appears on both the Fincastle page (as head of a household consisting of 4 free white persons and 11 slaves, mostly female), as well as on the general Botetourt County census enumeration (as owning 36 enslaved males).
David William Shanks (1830–1894), would receive a degree from Washington College, become a minister in Rockbridge County and later in Danville, survive the American Civil War and likewise marry twice.