The term "lynching" originated in Altavista, Virginia, during the Revolutionbry War, when Col. Charles Lynch took the law into his own hands instead of taking British sympathizers to Williamsburg for trial. He tied the accused to a tree on the Avoca property and lashed them. The tree remains, filled with concrete, are on the Avoca Museum property. Later the term came to mean "hanging by the neck until dead". Just a tidbit of Virginia history. Laura Catherine D. Fortune James R. Fortune