Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 September 1878 — Horrible Murder in Texas. [ARTICLE]

Horrible Murder in Texas.

The wife of George Lynch, a respected citizen of Berkley, Tex., died some weeks ago, leaving an infant. Lynch had seven other children, the oldest, Clemie, being 17 years of age. On Friday night the family retired as usual, a lamp being left burning in the main room. At midnight the father was awakened by a pistol shot and a ball striking him in the breast. He sprung up and saw a masked man standing in the middle of the room pointing a pistol at him. The assassin fired again, the ball entering beneath the collar bone. Lynch fell back unconscious. When he recovered consciousness he found himself lying in a lane outside the premises. The assassin, thinking Lynch dead, seized a hatchet, and put the children, who were witnesses, out of the way. He assaulted Clemie and buried the hatchet in her head; also crushed the skulls of three other children, and then set fire to the house.

The distracted father saw the burning house fall in on the bodies of his eight children. The bodies were 'afterward exhumed and an inquest held, when the hatchet-wounds were discovered upon the skulls of the children. It is thought Lynch will recover. A young man

named Boatware, with whom Lynch had had fliflicnltv, is suspected of the crime. —Houston \Te.ras) Telegraph.