WILLIAM LYNCH (Grave), Pickens County, SC Version 2.3, 20-Feb-2006, P242.TXT, P242 **************************************************************** REPRODUCING NOTICE: ------------------- These electronic pages may not be reproduced in any format for profit, or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the recording contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the following USGenWeb coordinator with proof of this consent. Paul M Kankula - nn8nn (visit above website) SCGenWeb "Golden Corner" Project Coordinator Anderson: http://www.rootsweb.com/~scandrsn/ Oconee: http://www.rootsweb.com/~scoconee/oconee.html Pickens: http://www.rootsweb.com/~scpicke2/ **************************************************************** DATAFILE INPUT . : Paul M. Kankula at (visit above website) in Sep-2003 DATAFILE LAYOUT : Paul M. Kankula at (visit above website) in Sep-2003 G.P.S. MAPPING . : Gary Flynn at (visit above website) in Oct-2003 HISTORY WRITE-UP : Noted IMAGES ......... : Linda Skelton at lwskelton@mindspring.com Gary Flynn at (visit above website) in Oct-2003 LOCATION WRITE-UP: Gary Flynn at (visit above website) in Oct-2003 TRANSCRIPTION .. : Linda Skelton at lwskelton@mindspring.com **************************************************************** CEMETERY LOCATION: ------------------ Locate intersection of Highways 11 and 178. Drive (NE) on Highway 11. In 0.8 miles turn left (W) onto Sliding Rock Rd. Entrance to: The Rock on Jocassee Golf Community) 171 Sliding Rock Pickens, SC 29671 864-878-2030 In 0.3 miles turn right onto Falcon Crest Way. Look for Lot #50 on your left. Cemetery is on the backside of this lot. 4' high pile of logs will block your view. Red plastic ribbon will mark the path. Latitude N 34 59.897 x Longitude W 82 45.207 CHURCH/CEMETERY HISTORY: ------------------------ Our History Table Rock Resort is located at the intersection of Scenic Highway 11 and US Highway 178. It is joined on almost all sides by 180,000 acres of Game Management Area and the Resort itself contains over 500 acres. Nestled at the base of one of South Carolina's highest peaks (3350'), the Resort is laced with trout streams and several waterfalls; one being Gauley Falls, South Carolina's famous Sliding Rock. Once a great Cherokee Indian Village stood in this majestic valley along Gauley Creek. The Cherokee had lived here for centuries, which is why it is not uncommon to find ancient Indian artifacts throughout the property. In South Carolina, the Cherokee sided with the British Loyalists during the American Revolution. Through several battles, their villages were burned and the Cherokee were removed in 1776. Captain William Lynch, for services rendered during the American Revolution, was granted this land around 1780. Lynch, a former Member of the House of Delegates in Virginia, introduced legislation to "Whip Torries at the Post" for stealing horses. Thus, the term "Lynch's Law" was born. Captain Lynch and his wife, Annie Moon, built their home at Gauley, and at his death, Captain Lynch was buried here. After the Lynch's death, the property changed owners several times. Bailey Barton, who sold it to Jacob Lewis and his wife, Elizabeth, bought the property. Around the time of Elizabeth's death, Thomas R. Price bought 850 acres of the tract on October 5,1852 for $2.25 per acre, a total sum of $1900.00, As an enterprising pioneer, Thomas R. Price built a home place here, which later burned. He also built a small store near the church to meet the immediate needs of the people in this area, and a Mill at the Falls on the creek at the entrance of the Indian Path and the pack train route up the mountain. At the Mill he ground the people's corn, rye, barley and malts for their distilleries in which they converted their grains and fruits into products which could be easily transported in wagons many miles to the centers of trade and marketing. Price was also chosen as Group Captain for a monumental construction project. The project was the first road across the mountains to Sassafras Gap following the Cherokee Indian Trail to North Carolina. This was the beginning of the old toll gate road. The toll gate itself adjoined Price's Mill and remained in use until 1926. It was traveled by President's Andrew Jackson and William Taft during its operation. The next owner of the property was W.R. (Pete) Price, son of Thomas. He continued operation of the Mill, toll road and store and gave land and money for a new church and cemetery. At age 14, he served as courier during the Civil War, carrying messages to the various encampments. In the early 1920's, Wade M. Chastain purchased the tract of land from Pete Price after marrying his daughter. By 1922, a spacious home (the present clubhouse), a smokehouse and several outbuildings were in use. Mr. Chastain was the General Manager of Carolina Timber Company (presently the Singer Plant), and also operated the Mill and general store. He died at the age of 58 and so many people attended the home funeral that the large front porch gave way and had to be replaced. The property was held by the Chastain children until Haskett and Townsend bought the property from the estate in 1977. The Haskett/Townsend partnership was dissolved in 1982 when Haskett became the sole owner of the property known as Gauley Falls Country Club. Table Rock Resort, Inc. purchased the property in April of 1986. This is only a brief summary of the historical background of this most intriguing and fascinating community! Unknown Author, Table Rock Resort Inc at http://www.tablerockresort.com o----------o Karen Painter at pattypainter@cs.com, I know that you were already convinced about William Lynch and Lynch law, but I remained skeptical. Well, I received in the mail yesterday something that I consider to be definitive, irrefutable proof that our Capt. William Lynch is, in fact, the source of the Lynch Law. I am doing an article for SC Wildlife magazine on the re-survey of the state border and the fellow that I am interviewing mentioned last week that he had a copy of Prof. George Blackburn's journal (1813). Blackburn surveyed the state border from Caesar's Head to Ellicott's Rock at the Chattooga river. He agreed to copy the journal and send it to me, which I received yesterday. Well, lo and behold, Blackburn boarded for some time with Capt. William Lynch and confirms that he was the one that started the Lynch Law in Pittsylvania, VA. He notes that Lynch's neighbor, a Mr. Lay, also confirmed it, as he was one the original "lynch-men" in Virginia. I was pretty excited by all this and called Anna Simon late yesterday afternoon. I faxed her the pertinent page of the journal. By the way, her story is scheduled to run in the G'ville News this Sunday. Thought you want to know. Dennis Chastain at dchas878@aol.com, 19-Mar-2004 o----------o Karen Painter at pattypainter@cs.com, CAPTAIN WILLIAM LYNCH Pension application of John Weatherford, accounting his service with CAPTAIN WILLIAM LYNCH. Received from NARA, master number 110616, SOP # OFF303541, April 28, 2004, Site NWCTB. DECLARATION, transcription of service with Captain William Lynch In order to obtain the benefit of the Act of Congress drafted June 7th, 1832. 1845, Personally appeared in open court before the Probate Court, State of Indiana, County of Bartholomew, 12th day of August, AD, 1845. (After describing time with other officers, John Weatherford continues) There was about a year of an interval between the time of my discharge from my first tour, when I entered for this 2nd tour. We marched to North Carolina (from Pittsylvania Co., VA) and was within about twenty miles of General Gates when he gave up his men. When the news came that Gates had given up his men it was within a few days of he end of my tour and we were all discharged to the (torn and taped)... I immediately returned to Pittsylvania County Virginia and promptly volunteered in the United States Service under CAPTAIN WILLIAM LINCH, sic, who had command of a company called Minutemen , that was intended as a defense against the Tories. I served under CAPTAIN LINCH four tours. I joined him in Pittsylvania during the whole of the four tours of 3 months each. (Ink blot) 3 or 4 days of the last of the 4th tour when we heard that Cornwallis had driven General (Nathaniel) Green from South Carolina into Virginia. CAPTAIN LINCH, then discharged us all and I together with himself and many more, entered the service of the United States under Thomas Smith, Captain and Colonel Peter Perkins, to meet Gen. Green and his force against Cornwallis. When we came up to Green, he had crossed the Dan River back again into North Carolina. Colonel Morgan was there in command of the riflemen and I being a rifleman, was attached to his regiment. We marched to the Hanging Rock of the Hawe River. We there had a battle with the British and Tories and defeated them. We marched from there to Guilford and fought the Battle of Guilford (Courthouse). In that battle I was within 15 or 20 feet of General Stevens when he was shot in the thigh. From here, John Weatherford describes what happened to his papers, his health and age, 98. Signed, Uriah McQueen and Samuel Sandifer, witness clergymen. And the said court do hereby declare their opinion after the investigation of the matter and after putting the interrogations presented, that the above named applicant was a Revolutionary Soldier and served as he states. Henry B. Roland, Judge of the Probate Court, Bartholomew County, Indiana. o----------o Captain William Lynch (1742-1820 An Intriguing Past, but An Uncertain Future By Dennis Chastain They say he was a big man - a man possessed with the physical stature of an Olympic athlete. But everything known about old William Lynch indicates that he was a prominent figure in ways that go beyond physical stature. While living in Pittsylvania Virginia in the mid-1700s, he was a recognized leader in his local community and served as Captain of the local of militia. Later, during the American Revolution, he fought under the command of General Nathaniel Greene. Lynch served one term in the Virginia House of Delegates, and by 1836, he had gained sufficient notoriety that no lesser personage than American icon, Edgar Alan Poe, felt compelled to write a commentary in the Southern Literary Messenger about the Lynch Law, naming William Lynch as the author. Lynch later relocated to the Pendleton District, where he became a substantial landowner. His homestead in the Holly Springs community in northern Pickens County was depicted in the Mills Atlas (1820) map of the Pendleton District as the most prominent landmark in the immediate area. And it can now be said with some authority that he was, indeed, the source of the term "Lynch Law", which is a story within itself. No less than a half-dozen individuals throughout history have been proposed as the source of the Lynch Law, and theories regarding the origin of this controversial system of summary justice abound, but all the speculation can now be put to rest. Just as some of his descendants have maintained for years, it was indeed, old William Lynch, who took matters into hand and initiated the actions that led to the historically significant phenomenon known as the Lynch Law. The story begins back in 1776 in colonial Virginia, specifically the area around Pittsylvania, near the Dan River along the North Carolina/Virginia border. During this awkward period in American history, the arm of the law was not quite so long as one would have liked. As a matter of fact, it seldom reached beyond the limits of the major centers of population. Lawlessness in the backcountry was rampant and folks in the hinterlands of the colonies were forced by necessity to fend for themselves. It was the same phenomenon that, in the 1760s, led to the Regulator movement in South Carolina. In Virginia, William Lynch decided to do what he could to remedy the situation. He gathered his neighbors together one Sunday afternoon and established a rudimentary system of summary justice for errant souls and roving gangs of scofflaws that terrorized the colonists. In their written agreement, Lynch and his neighbors, wrote that they had, "sustained great and intolerable losses by a set of lawless men, who have banded themselves together to deprive honest men of their just rights and property, by stealing their horses, counterfeiting, and passing paper currency, and committing many other species of villany, too tedious to mention, and that those vile miscreants do still persist in their diabolical practices, and have hereto escaped the civil power with impunity" The group decided to form and organization, later known as the "Lynch- men", and vowed to "put a stop to the iniquitous practices of those unlawful and abandoned wretches..." That very afternoon they wrote and adopted a set of guidelines for dispensing summary justice, the document that later became known as Lynch's Law. It was a bold stroke of "can do" spirit that even critics described as imminently successful, and a phenomenon that later spread to other colonies and even into Europe. Much of what we know about William Lynch during his later years in Pickens County comes from the diaries of two 19th century surveyors who boarded with Lynch while engaged in surveying the border of between the two Carolinas and Georgia. First was George Blackburn, a professor of mathematics and astronomy from South Carolina College (later the University of SC). Blackburn surveyed the border between North and South Carolina between Caesars Head and the Chattooga River. He wrote in his journal stories of which he is himself the Hero. He gave us an account of a law called Lynch's law". Blackburn, who was a scientist and a self-styled poet, also wrote a bit of prose about old William Lynch in his journal. George Blackburn, by the way, was a colorful character in his own right. His students, back in Columbia, so despised him that they burned him in effigy one evening. A large crowd gathered, a melee ensued, and the Governor had to call out the state militia to quell the riot. Nevertheless, his journal entries regarding William Lynch are an invaluable resource for those wishing to know more. Andrew Ellicott, who in 1811 was engaged by the state of Georgia to determine the border between the two Carolinas and Georgia at the 35th parallel, also spent some time with William Lynch. Notably, Ellicott wrote in his journal, "Captain Lynch just mentioned was the author of the Lynch laws..." Ellicott went on to say that, "I should not have asserted it as fact had it not been related to me by Mr. Lynch himself and his neighbor Mr. Lay, one of the original association together with several other Lynch-men as they were called" It should be noted that George Blackburn, Andrew Ellicott and Edgar Alan Poe were unanimously critical of the principle of summary justice behind the Lynch Law, which they saw as nothing more than vigilantism, but nevertheless Blackburn and Ellicott both expressed a favorable impression of Lynch himself. The truth is that the actions of every man, living and dead, must be judged in the context of the times in which they live. There is no denying that in later years, and particularly in the years after William Lynch's death and up to the time of the Civil Way, the principle of summary justice was much abused and probably did, indeed, eventually lead to many acts of pure vigilantism. But one has only to read the text of the Lynchmen's compact to know that their motives were sincere and their goal was noble in spirit. William Lynch was an important figure in American history and it would only be logical to assume that the gravesite of such an important figure would be a way- point on any historical tour of Pickens County, but few people even know where his grave is. It would seem appropriate that his role in American history would be detailed in his school textbooks, but not a word of William Lynch's residence in Pickens County or the Lynch Law can be found in textbooks on the history of South Carolina. One would expect that, at a minimum, his gravesite would be maintained and cared for and identified for posterity with a permanent historical marker, but that is not the case. Furthermore, the gravesite is not only poorly maintained, it barely escaped the blade of a bulldozer last year. On an obscure pine knoll in the midst of The Rock resort development, located at the intersection of US Highway 178 and the Cherokee Foothills Scenic Highway in northern Pickens County, the neglected remnants of Captain William Lynch's gravesite lies hidden away. In order to access the grave, one must first obtain permission from the landowner and then try to locate the grave behind a patch of briars and broom straw, and a jumbled mess of storm-felled Virginia pines. All that remains to mark the final resting place of Old William Lynch is a crumbling wall of fieldstones and a somewhat primitive granite monument, which has toppled over on its backside. Except for the efforts of several of his descendants, which led to a recent article in the Greenville News, the gravesite would likely be lost forever. Among William Lynch's many descendants and extended relatives in the upstate, only a small group, led by Karen Patterson, of Travelers Rest and Linda Skelton, a descendant who now lives in South Carolina's low country, has sustained the effort to get recognition and permanent preservation for the gravesite. But despite their dedicated efforts, the future of the William Lynch grave can only be described as uncertain. The above article appeared in the Old Pendleton District Newsletter, Vol. 18, No. 5, June, 2004 The Carolina Herald, Summer Issue 2004 Page 24 o----------o Holly Springs Baptist Church: I have a deed from William Lynch, where he deeds a certain place for the beginnings of "A" church, it does not specifically say Holly Springs. It could have well been under another name. I don't know off the top of my head when this actual Holly Springs church was formed, but it was after William's death in 1820. For some reason the date 1838 is in my head, but please don't take that as fact. ----- The Rock of Jocassee management planned on having a fence and a walkway to the grave. I checked the RMC office and the deed was never recorded. When the back hoe dug the basement for the house next door, they covered up the markers with dirt. Senator Glenn McConnell is working with my son to see to it nothing is disturbed at either Lynch cemetery. We are hoping that Jocassee Gorges will buy the family cemetery. I got a tombstone for Nathaniel Lynch, Sr. depicting his War of 1812 service, and there are at least 3 marked Civil War graves. We did a Southern Cross of Honor ceremony for those three. by: Karen Pringle at pattypainter@charter.net in Feb-2006 o----------o I need some help on a grave in Pickens County, and I hope you can help me or point me in the right direction. I am looking for the grave of a RW soldier buried in Pickens named Capt. William LYNCH (1742-1820), who died testate in Pendleton Dist. I understand that he is buried in a lone grave in Pickens at or near a shopping mall, but that his grave has been marked. He came to SC from Pittsylvania Co., VA. I will appreciate any help you can afford me with this. I am currently working on another Cherokee book dealing with Indian countrymen and mixed-blood family lines in GA. One of Capt. Lynch's sons, Jeter Lynch, moved to the Nacoochee Valley of Habesham (now White) County and married a mixed-blood woman named Nancy Martin (niece of >Gen. Joseph Martin of VA). Lynch died in 1819 soon after taking a 640-acre reservation under the Treaty of Feb. 27, 1819. I understand from some sources that Capt. Lynch's will names his children, including Jeter. Do you happen to know of anyone who has a copy of Capt. Lynch's will, or where I might be able to get a copy? With all good wishes, Don L. Shadburn, Forsyth Co. (GA) Historian, PH 770/887-1626 donshadburn@webtv.net, 15-May-2006 o----------o This cemetery profile is a real treasure to me! I really appreciate the time and work you've obviously done on this. Congratulations! And again, many thanks! With all good wishes, Don, donshadburn@webtv.net TOMBSTONE TRANSCRIPTION NOTES: ------------------------------ a. = age at death b. = date-of-birth d. = date-of-death h. = husband m. = married p. = parents w. = wife LYNCH, William, b. 1742, d. 1820, 1st w. elizabeth, 2nd w. ann moon, captain in revolutionary war, (*)lost eye fighting Cherokee Indians (*) = A William Lynch lost an eye in the Cherokee Wars. This is true, but it's the William Lynch from Greenville County, not William Lynch from Pendleton. By: Karen Patterson