Note 55 — Chapter II · Origin of the Term Lynch-law

There are two errors here. Lynchburg was not named for him but for his brother, John Lynch, and the plan was started later than “some seventy or eighty years ago.” Mr. Matthews disagrees with the writer in saying that this account is entirely independent of what Wirt had written on the subject. It seems to the writer, however, that these two inaccuracies indicate that Martin was drawing wholly from his own sources of information. He was, apparently, merely writing down what was considered a matter of common knowledge among the older men in that section of the country, many of whom were emigrants from Virginia.