Charles Lynch (1736 – 1796) was an American planter, politician, military officer and judge who headed a kangaroo court in Virginia to punish Loyalists during the Revolutionary War. The terms "lynching" and "lynch law" are believed to be derived from his surname.
Early life
thumb|right|300px|Map of the Colony of Virginia during the pre-revolutionary era.
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 brother, John Lynch, would later establish the town of Lynchburg. Lynch's father left his native Ireland and emigrated to the British colony of Virginia in about 1725 as an indentured servant, called a "redemptioner" in the nomenclature of the day. Lynch married a fellow Quaker, the former Anne Terrell, on January 12, 1755.
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. Lynch was instrumental in organizing a Quaker meeting in Bedford County and raising funds for a building to house it, the first public house of worship in the area. Lynch served for several years as the clerk of the meeting and as trustee of the group's meeting house. After the Revolution, he served in the Virginia Senate from 1784 to 1789.
He defined "Lynch's Law", as private vengeance or summary and illegal punishment for crimes actual or pretended, with his "Lynching" being applied both on account of race and opposition to the Revolution. Variations of the term, such as "lynch law", "judge lynch", and "lynching", were standard entries in American and British English dictionaries by the 1850s. In 1811, a man named Captain William Lynch claimed that the phrase, already famous, actually came from a 1780 compact signed by him and his neighbors in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, to uphold their own brand of law independent of legal authority. The obscurity of the Pittsylvania County compact compared to the well-known actions of Charles Lynch casts doubt on it being the source of the phrase.
Later life and death
Lynch, like many other planters of his day, had a significant amount of his money tied up in real estate, and was cash poor. He lived in relative poverty at his home, Avoca. He died and was buried there in 1796.