Charles Lynch (judge)

Charles Lynch (1736-1796) was a Virginia planter, politician, and American revolutionary who headed an irregular court in Virginia to punish Loyalist supporters of the British during the American Revolutionary War. The terms "lynching" and "lynch law" are believed to be derived from his name.

He was born in 1736 at an estate known as Chestnut Hill on the banks of the James River in Virginia, a place at which his elder brother would later establish the town of Lynchburg.

Lynch's father left his native Ireland and emigrated to the English Colony of Virginia in about 1725 as an indentured servant, called a "redemptioner" in the nomenclature of the day. Upon arrival to the New World, Lynch's contract of indenture was sold to a wealthy planter living in Caroline County. Lynch remained with the planter for his fixed term of servitude, winning in the process not only his freedom but also the hand of his daughter, Sarah Clark, in marriage.

With the financial assistance of the elder Clark, the Lynches themselves became planters of tobacco on a large scale, farming well over 7,000 acres of Virginia land. Sometime between Charles' birth in 1736 and the middle of the decade, Charles' father died, leaving behind his Chestnut Hill estate to his eldest son, John. His mother joined the Quaker religious sect in 1750, bringing her sons with her into that religion.

Lynch married a fellow Quaker, the former Anne Terrell, on January 12, 1755. With Chestnut Hill occupied by his brother, the young couple set out to establish their new home on Virginia's western frontier on a more distant parcel of land granted to his father by King George II, in the newly established Bedford County. Green Level, the Lynch estate where the couple would ultimately raise five children, was located at a place now marked by the town of Altavista.

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