The family of Joseph and Missouri (Cobbs) Hargrave arrived from Louisiana in 1848 with their two chilren[2] and settled on a farm in the same area as the Lynch family.  Their eldest daughter, Cyllanae, was born in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, in 1842.  She met George Lynch as they grew up near each other and, as they entered their teens, George began to court her.  When George turned 20 and Cyllanae was 17, they went to Hockley, in Harris county,[3] and they married there July 4, 1860.[4]

In August 1860, a month after their marriage, George joined a committee against abolitionism at Hockley and signed a "resolution of vigilance".[5]  This expressed support for actions in Occoquan, Virginia,[6] where local residents opposed the election of Abraham Lincoln and his vice-presidential running mate, Hannibal Hamlin.  The democrats in Occoquan had even torn down a campaign banner erected by black Republicans.[7]

The local community, like much of the South, was agitated about the prospect of the Republicans winning the presidency and abolishing slavery.  Few people had slaves, but it was vital to the region's economy and they deeply resented even more the federal government's intrusion into their lives.

In September, a month after his signing the resolution in Hockley, George and Cyllanae had moved to Lynchburg.  Recorded on the 1860 census, he took a job as a clerk in Thompkin's General Store and their first child, a daughter named Caroline, was born.

Tempers were rising throughout the southern states over abolition and, in December of 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union, followed quickly by Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee.  When the guns of war sounded at Fort Sumpter, George enlisted in the Confederate cause, joining the Texas 20th Cavalry.

Cyllanae, left alone and struggling to care for their infant daughter, moved back to be near her family in Courtney, Grimes County.

George, while with the 20th, fought in the Battle of Galveston in January of 1863 under General Magruder, helping to expel occupying Union forces.  Two years later, the war was over and the 20th surrendered in Galveston June 2, 1865.  but the hardships of the war and Reconstruction left the family struggling. George applied for assistance as a Confederate Indigent Family. [8]  The next year, 1866, they had their second child, Loraine, followed by two more children, Marion and Joseph, by July of 1870.[9]

The Lynch family moved to a farm on Spring Creek, near Field's Store and not far from Hockley.  George built a log cabin there, with one end cut out for a mud and stick chimney, and two attached sheds for food storage and a smokehouse.  They had four more children there.  Cyllanae maintained the home, performing many tasks, including taking care of the babies, knitting clothes, washing them at the creek and darning them when they were worn.  She was fortunate to have an iron kettle and skillet which she used to cook stews and soups and also to make soap and candles.  She had to stoop over the fireplace to cook the meals and bake bread in the iron skillet  When she was not caring for the children and mending clothes, she was canning and smoking food to prepare for the winter.  She also planted flowers and a small plot of vegetables just outside their home.  George provided for his family by selling crops, cattle and hogs.  He taught his children to help their mother and to assist him plow, plant, weed and harvest the vegetables and to pick the cotton and take it to the gin.  He began work before daylight and worked until after dark.  Game was plentiful, and he could often bring back something for the family to eat.  After work, he would return for the evening meal and help put the babies to bed.  The family's recreation consisted of swimming in the creek, hunting and attending preachings at the homes of neighbors and an occasional celebration or dance in Hockley.

Their nearest neighbor was Musco Boulware, who was a wealthy cotton planter from Fairfield county, South Carolina.[10] He had moved his plantation to Alachua county, Florida by 1852 and is on the 1860 census there.[11]  That year, his plantation was valued at $5,300 and his personal fortune was given as $10,180, with eleven slaves[12] to work his fields.  He lost his slave labor in 1865, following the Civil War, which severely hurt him financially and, sometime after 1870, he moved to a place on Spring Creek in Waller county, Texas, adjacent to the George Lynch farm.

The relationship between the family of Musco Boulware and George Lynch unfortunately wasn't friendly.  The great disparity in the economic circumstance of the two families could have been part of the problem.  Fences were difficult to build and maintain, and cattle would sometimes cross into adjacent fields and trample the crops, and this was definitely a bone of contention between the families.  George was active with a group combatting cattle thieving in the area and was secretary to it, and that may have added to the contentious atmosphere between the two families.

The tension between the Boulware and Hargrave families grew until one of Musco's sons, Reuben, on two occasions pointed a gun at George.  George reported him to the sheriff both times and Reuben was fined.  Reuben's older brother, William, assaulted George while he was returning home from Fields Store, pulling him from his wagon and beating him severely.

In August of 1878, George & Cyllanae Lynch had their eighth child, a son they named Hayes.  Cyllanae died only a week or so later, leaving George to care for their eight children, with the eldest, Carrie, only 17 years old, taking on the household responsibilities.

The next month saw the days getting shorter, with mild temperatures and cool nights.  On Monday, September 10th, a strong norther caught the people of east Texas by surprise with sharply cooler temperatures, gale force winds and heavy rain in Galveston, damaging some of the boats.[13]   The norther caused unpleasant conditions as far inland as San Antonio[14] and brought drenching rains across the coastal plains.  The days that followed were brisk and pleasant with occasional rain showers..  It was the end of the summer growing season and the crops were being harvested and the fields plowed under for winter planting, but the recent rain and muddy ground made it more difficult.

George and his kids had been working the last few weeks bringing in the corn and beans and other vegetables and taking some to Hockley to sell.  The first thing Thursday morning, the 12th of September, George butchered a hog and put the meat in the smokehouse shed he used to preserve it.  The younger kids performed their daily chores, including gathering the eggs from the chicken coop and feeding the hogs and cattle.  The boys worked outside, gathering more vegetables from the garden and picking fruit from the trees.  These were brought into the house so the older kids could can some of it in preparation for winter and use the rest for meals.  George was busy that afternoon plowing the fields in preparation for a winter crop.  The two oldest children, seventeen-year-old Carrie and twelve-year-old Loraine, supervised the rest in doing their chores and then the younger ones went off to play down by the creek.

It was another long day for George and the children.  They were tired and it was getting dark and time to turn in for the night, when one of his children ran out to tell him they'd seen an ox grazing and trampling the crops.  He didn't know whether it was his ox or someone else's, but he didn't want it damaging his plantings, so he saddled his horse and went looking for the animal.  The sun set about half past six[15] and it was already getting dark, but a full moon[16] rose about an hour later,[17] giving him some light but he was unable to locate the beast so, about nine o'clock, he came back to the house, where Carrie and Loraine, his two oldest daughters, told him they'd seen the ox go back around the pond.  It was late and the children needed to be fed and put to bed, and there was an infant to attend to, so he called it a day, unsaddled his horse and put it in the pen and went inside to have supper with his family.

After they'd eaten, the dishes washed and put away and the candles extinguished, they settled down to sleep.  George didn't go to his bed, as he wanted to wait for the infant to wake up so he could be fed and have his diaper changed.  He was exhausted, so he lay down on the floor next to the baby, leaving a coal-oil lantern lit for a little light.

While waiting for little baby Hayes to wake up, he dozed off.  He was awakened around midnight by an unusual noise outside and he got up and went to see if it was the ox.  Looking around in the moonlight, he saw something move out by the road and went to investigate.  What followed would become one of the worst crimes in all of Texas' history.  Someone stepped out from cover and shot George in the chest.  He stumbled backward in shock and the assailant shot again, breaking his collar bone, whereupon George fell unconscious.  Thinking they'd been successful in killing him, they proceeded to torch his house – with his children asleep inside.  In the span of an hour, in the wee hours of Friday the 13th 1878, everything George had worked for his entire life, his home and his children were taken from him in that awful conflagration.

A distant neighbor, Harry Lado, heard the report of a gun and got up and looked out his door.  He saw what at first he thought was moonlight reflecting off the smokehouse on the east side of the Boulware residence, but realized it was a fire.  Stepping outside, he saw that the Lynch house was on fire.  About the same time, young Mattie Boulware woke up and looked outside and shouted "Mr. Lynch's house is on fire" and aroused her family.  Lado hurriedly dressed and went to investigate and was joined by another neighbor, James Hargrave, a brother-in-law of George Lynch.  When they reached the terrible scene, the fire was intense and very hot and the north part of the house fell in as they approached.  They found George lying incoherent in the lane with gunshot wounds to his chest and neck.  They stopped the bleeding and carried him to Mr. Weaver's, a neightbor about a mile away.

Later that day, justice of the peace John Pinckney went to investigate and appointed six men as a jury of inquest to help him.[18]  The inquest found that all eight children had perished in the blaze and, strangely, it appeared that not one of them had moved from where they slept.  Suspicion was immediately cast upon Reuben Boulware, but he was asleep in his bed when it occurred, as confirmed by his family, and no other person was implicated at that time.  George was taken to a nephew's house in Hockley where he was attended by a doctor who extracted the bullets and found they were .22 caliber balls fired from a pistol.  One of the coroner's jury, 27 year old Robert Finklea, considered a valuable witness in the investigation of the murders, was himself murdered at Hempstead only four days later,[19] adding to the mystery surrounding the case.  (The citizens of Texas were, understandably, suspicious of the law enforcement in Waller county [20] and suspicion was cast on the coroner, John M. Pinckney, but his reputation was strongly defended.) [21]

George was unaware of the fate of his children until being told by one of his friends, upon which time he wept uncontrollably and realizing all he held dear was gone, he sank into a deep depression.  He swore he would find the murderer or murderers, if it took him the rest of his life, but he was in a lot of pain from his wounds and there was fear the killer might try to finish the job, so his relatives prevailed on him to stay in Hockley where he had friends and relatives to help him and to watch out for any sign of danger.

Sometime before the murder of his children, he'd had several altercations with a young man of 22 named John Binford.[22]  He'd had Binford arrested for drawing a gun on him and they later drew weapons on each other.[23] [24]  A month and a half after George was shot and his family murdered, he was walking in town when he saw John Binford and he discharged both barrels of his shotgun at him, wounding him severely.[25]  He later told investigators that his shooting Binford was over an old grievance.  He expressed the belief that Binford was looking to kill him and that he shot in self-defense but that he did not believe John had anything to do with the killing of his family.[26]

The mystery surrounding the murder of the Lynch children was compounded by the fact that George couldn't recall exactly what had happened, offering several different versions, causing some to suspect that he had killed his own children and had shot himself to cover it up, but the evidence clearly showed he did not shoot himself and there was nothing substantive to support the suspicion that George had committed the crime.  No other person was remotely considered as a suspect in the foul deed.  The governor offered a substantial reward for evidence,[27] but nothing useful was uncovered.

The brutal killing of his family had occurred near Field's Store in the southern part of Waller county, that county having been known for some time as a place with an unusually high amount of violence, earning its county seat, Hempstead, the nickname "Six Shooter Junction".  True to that tradition, exactly one year to the day after George Lynch's family was murdered, another Hargrave brother-in-law, Frank Hargrave, killed Musco Boulware IV, a son of his old neighbor, Musco Boulware III, at Field's Store.  Witnesses said the shooting was prompted by an argument over a horse race,[28] [29] but some suspected it might be revenge for the killing of Frank's nieces and nephews, the children of his older sister Cyllanae and her husband George Lynch.  Musco Boulware IV was 23 when he died and Frank Hargrave was 19 when he shot him.

George wasn't a man easily frightened and he wasn't worried about being targeted by the killer of his family, but the pain and grief was heavy on him, and he needed to find a way to support himself and to try to forget, so he left for Leadville, Colorado.  Perhaps he followed someone he suspected of killing his family, but it's more likely he was bitten by the gold-rush fever, prompting him to leave Texas and go to a town only recently established because of the gold and silver being found in the vicinity.[30]  He is found there on the 1880 census as a miner.[31]  Leadville was considerably different than anything he had known before – it was a rough mining town of newly erected saloons, bordellos and assay offices.  It was filled with fast talkers, swindlers and thieves.  Everyone was a newcomer, strangers looking to get rich with avarice, covetousness, envy and suspicion around every corner.  And the environment took some getting used to – it was at 10,200 feet elevation, just below the tree line, and the winters were uncomfortably harsh, unlike the sea level east Texas coastal plains he was accustomed to.

He partnered with Charles Lyles on a claim and they dug in the hard ground and panned the streams for gold near Leadville.  As often happens, disagreements built between the two claim holders, culminating in a fight and George shot and killed Charles, and claimed self defense.

George was arrested, tried and convicted of murder June 18, 1881 and given a life sentence in the Colorado Territorial Prison.  Twelve years later, on April 24, 1893, he received a pardon from the Colorado governor because of good behavior and letters of support from friends.[32]

Nothing further is known about George Lynch.  The identity of the killer of his children remains a mystery.  Someone named George Lynch has been found advertising as a mining consultant in New Mexico and another in south Texas, perhaps the same person, perhaps the same George Lynch but nothing has been found to indicate the identity of any of them.  A G. W. Lynch bought 80 acres in Weiland, Hunt county, Texas in 1901.  Once again, it is not known who this person was or what became of George Lynch.