Note 29 — Chapter II · Origin of the Term Lynch-law

See article by Edward McCrady, in the Nation, Jan. 15, 1903 (76: 52). This article as originally written was published in full in the Sunday News, Charleston, S. C., Jan. 11, 1903. In a letter published in the Nation, March 19, 1903 (76: 225), Mr. George S. Wills cites an example of the use of the word lynch in connection with this creek, which is found in a journal kept by the Rev. William H. Wills, a Methodist minister of North Carolina, who traveled in his sulky from Tarboro, North Carolina, to Alabama, in the early summer of 1837. After describing a narrow escape from drowning in an attempt to cross Lynch’s Creek while it was swollen, the Rev. Mr. Wills writes in his journal: “Probably I shall never forget Lynches Creek; for it had well nigh Lynchd me.”—See “Publications of the Southern Historical Association,” November, 1902 (6:479). This example, however, shows no original connection between the term lynch-law and Lynch’s Creek, South Carolina. As will appear in the following pages, by the year 1837 the word lynch had come to be widely used to indicate summary punishment. Evidently the writer in this case merely noticed the similarity between the name of the creek and the word which had recently come into use, and so made this play upon words, using the word lynch in a somewhat figurative sense.