Still another “Origin of Lynch’s law” is given in Niles’ Register for August 8, 1835.[35] An anecdote is related of an occurrence “in Washington County, Pa., many years ago.” A poaching vagabond, long under suspicion, was finally detected and told to leave the neighborhood in twenty-four hours on penalty of prosecution. The poacher refused to comply and a party of five or six of his neighbors went to his home and “proceeded to try him in due form, choosing one of their number, a farmer named Lynch, to be judge.” The judge “decided that the poacher should be tied up and receive three hundred lashes, ‘well laid on,’ and then be given twenty-four hours to leave the place under penalty of receiving three hundred more if found after that time. The first part of the sentence was inflicted on the spot, with such _good intent_ as to render its repetition unnecessary. The culprit made off as fast as his lacerated limbs would permit him.” Nothing further is known of this farmer named Lynch, who acted as judge at this impromptu trial, and there is no reason for regarding this incident as in any way connected with the origin of lynch-law. It is merely an instance of recourse to summary procedure against an unpopular individual. It may or may not have been known at the time as punishment by Lynch’s law. We now come to the explanation of the origin of the term which has been most frequently given and which was for years accepted without question. It is to the effect that lynch-law originally had reference to the kind of law administered by Charles Lynch, in Virginia, during the latter part of the Revolutionary War. It is needless to recount here all the variations in the stories connecting the origin of lynch-law with the Lynch family in Virginia.[36] In certain accounts Charles Lynch has been confused with his older brother, John Lynch, who remained a Quaker all his life and was the founder of Lynchburg, Virginia. Some accounts refer vaguely to a Virginia farmer, or planter, by the name of Lynch, whose vigorous methods of punishing wrongdoers gave rise to the term lynch-law.[37] Haydn’s Dictionary of Dates (1860) apparently is responsible for the fiction that this mode of administering justice began about the end of the seventeenth century and derives its name from John Lynch, a farmer, who exercised it upon the fugitive slaves and criminals dwelling in the Dismal Swamp, North Carolina, when they committed outrages upon persons and property which the law could not promptly repress. This story is repeated in the editions of 1873 and 1885, and is also given in Harpers’ Popular Cyclopædia of the History of the United States,[38] and seems to have become generally accepted in France.[39] It is, however, wholly erroneous.