A TEXAS HORROR.
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EXTERMINATION OF A FAMILY OF BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN.
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Chloroformed, Murdered, and Burned to Ashes — The Authorities Trying to Shield the Assassins — The Hockley Massacre a Crime Unparalleled.
Correspondence of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
Hockley, Tex., Oct. 1. — The "Hockley Horror," as the Lynch tragedy and massacre are called, is still fresh in the minds of the people of Texas. Be it said to the honor of the great body of the people — leaving out criminals and their sympathizers — that this dreadful deed continues to excite their honest indignation. This extraordinary and wholesale slaughter of an entire family at one fell swoop, is indeed beyond all odds the most horrible affair of the kind that has disgraced the present century, and it is doubtful if the most bloody pages of history, even the darkest (unreadable) contain so dreadful a mystery. The murder of the princes in the tower, or the horrible revelations of the dungeons of the Spanish Inquisition, have nothing to equal the silent terror of this fearful crime.
George W. Lynch, a most respectable, honest, and honorable citizen — a native of Texas — a Master Mason in good standing — years ago married a Miss Hargrave, belonging to one of the most reputable families of Central Texas. They lived happily together. Her husband built them a quiet and beautiful home surrounded by everything that makes that sacred place happy, and all the comforts of an ordinary rural residence. It was situated in Waller County, seven miles northwest of Hockley, looking down upon the limpid waters of Spring Creek, a mill to the westward, to whose sandy banks a prairie of tall grass swept down. In the background were umbrageous groves of broad spreading trees, flanked on either side by fields white with the staple of the South, or waving with corn. In a clump of oaks was located the family mansion. Trees waved above the "gallery" or veranda, and beautiful shrubbery, tended by the hand of Mrs. Lynch, such as usually adorns a Southern home, was tastefully arranged around the house.
Besides the father and mother — the latter having died two weeks before the dark tragedy that ushered her offspring into eternity — the family, now in their graves, consisted of the following: Miss Carrie Lynch, a beautiful girl of seventeen; Miss Loraine Lynch, her handsome young sister, aged thirteen years; Lodie Lynch, Abigail Lynch, Jerome Lynch, aged eleven years; China Lynch, Phoebe Lynch and Hayes Lynch. The last mentioned was the innocent babe (a few weeks old) bequeathed by the tender wife of Mr. Lynch to his keeping, and which also perished in the conflagration set by the hand of the devilish assassin.
A Globe-Democrat correspondent to-day called upon George W. Lynch, the father of the ill fated family, who, since the affair, and the more effectually to recover from his wound, has been removed to Hockley, where alone, in the midst of his friends, his life is not deemed safe from the same infernal demons that sent his innocent children to their graves. When the correspondent alluded to his lost ones, the unfortunate man burst into tears and wept like a child. Said he: "They say the bodies of all my children were recovered from the ruins of my house; but I know better, only six bodies were found."
"What became of the other two, and was the bodie (sic) of Miss Carrie one of them?"
"I do not know;" and Lynch, who is a strong man, mentally and physically, averted his gaze, and shed tears again.
Hence the question arises among the horrified people of Texas, if the body of Miss Carrie Lynch, his unfortunate girl, was not recovered from the ruins of the burned building. If she was not burned up with the other children, what was her fate? Abduction? The future alone must answer. The question at last must be solved, when the earth and sea give up their dead, and the guileless spirit of the young girl confronts her murderers in the great day of account.
Lynch's story is as follows: After attending to some farm duties, he entered his home about 8 o'clock, and lay down to seek repose in the midst of his eight motherless children. He intended arising again to feed the baby who, with Miss Carrie Lynch, occupied a bed in a corner of the large hall, and near the fireplace. The other six children lay on beds in the same apartment. A lamp was dimly lit burning on the bureau. Lynch says when he lay down all the children were asleep, and the last he saw of Miss Carrie she was slumbering with her face toward the little babe. It was past midnight, and the brilliant stars looked down upon the shadow that stealthily crept into the doomed house. Lynch was suddenly awakened by the report of a pistol and a ball piercing his bosom. His eyes were opened by the shock to perceive a dark object bending above him. No word was spoken. The demon fired again. This time the ball penetrated his breast under the collar bone. He fell senseless. How long he was insenseless he does not know. The next he remembers he was making his way out on the veranda, while a sheet of flame licked its red tongue out through the doorway. He was, in a narrow lane in front of his residence, encountered by two of his horrified neighbors, Lado, and his brother-in-law, Hargrave. (Who were Lado and brother-in-law Hargrave? Hargrave would have to a brother of his deceased wife?) Lynch said, "I'm shot twice, and my children are all burned up. Look for them." The wounded man was then taken to a neighbor's house, that of Mr. Weaver.
Just as the two neighbors came up the north wing of the building was falling in, and the entire structure going down before the fierce flames that were wreathing around the bodies of Lynch's eight children — everything he held dear on earth. Next day citizens collected. Coroner J. M. Pinckney held an inquest. The bodies were dug from the ruins — burned into charred and blackened crisps — and a verdict rendered that they had come to their deaths from parties unknown, and that the children had met with foul play. Although parties were suspected, however, neither the Coroner nor any other official took any steps to make any arrest. There was but little investigation, in fact, which tallies with the subsequent course of the Coroner in writing a communication to a local paper defending one of Lynch's neighbors from current suspicion, which has fastened upon him. The Coroner seems rather to seek to avert suspicion than to investigate the crime. In fact, the officials of Waller County, nor the people of the neighborhood where the crime was committed, have shown any disposition to ferret out this most damnable crime. Gov. Hubbard, however who has ever shown a disposition to punish crime, has offered a large reward for the assassins, which will in a short time bring them in. For a day or two Lynch was unaware of the certainty of the fate of his children, and until one of his friends, sitting by his bedside, said:
"George, it is my duty now to tell you that you have not a child on earth."
It has been concluded by some of the best detectives that the eight children had either been killed or rendered insensible before their father was aroused by the shot of the assassin. Their bodies were found in the exact position they occupied when they lay down to sleep. Not one had even turned over or changed position. Some think they were chloroformed, and probably their father, who was only awakened from his stupor by the shock of the murderer's bullet. This view is strengthened from the fact that the neighbors who first arrived heard no cry, no infant's wail, as the flames formed their fiery winding sheets. It is argued that had any of these innocent victims been alive, or uninfluenced by some drug, the first shot at their parent would have awakened some one of them, who would have made their escape. The victims made no screams as they all went down in their fiery death. This it is that gives this unparalleled tragedy its inexpressible and thrilling horror. How long had these eight beautiful children been killed before the conflagration was set, and how were they killed? These are questions that still remain a dreadful and apparently inscrutable mystery. To-day a Globe-Democrat correspondent rode out to the scene of the murder, on Spring Creek. Hitching his horse to one of the fine shade trees in front of the ruined homestead — now silent as the fresh graves filled by its inmates — the correspondent walked the beautiful yard whose scorched shrubbery still bears the marks of the destroying element, and strode over the blackened and charred ruins. It was a sad sight. Here was the exact spot where burned bones of the beautiful young daughter were picked up; there where the charred skull of one of the smaller children was found. Clews to the perpetrators of this, the most awful tragedy ever enacted in Texas, have been obtained, nor will it be many weeks before the infernal devils who murdered the eight innocents will bin hands that will not stickle to send their blackened souls to hell in the same fiery element that hissed above the bodies of their helpless victims.
"A Texas Horror." Cincinnati Daily Gazette, Thursday, October 10, 1878. p. 5, col. 5.