GOODSPEED BIOGRAPHIES
Contributed by Charlene Holland
F.M. LYNCH
It is a remarkable fact that the majority of those men of Tennessee birth who have become residents of Scott County, Ark., have been peculiarly successful in the accumulation of worldly goods, and are considered superior farmers, and Mr. Lynch is but another example of this truth. He was born in 1834, the fourth of seven children, born to F. B. Lynch and wife, the former of whom was a farmer of Tennessee, but a native of Virginia, who was quite a prominent man of his day, and held a number of county offices with credit and distinction. He died in 1844, and his widow in 1858. The immediate subject of this sketch was reared in his Native State, and educated in the common schools. When eighteen years of age he went to Texas to seek his fortune, and was there engaged in farming for sixteen years, after which he came to Scott County, and settled on his present farm of 200 acres, 80 acres of which are under cultivation. While in Texas, he was commissioner of Harrison County, from 1868 to 1874, and also held, with great credit to himself, the office of justice of the peace. He has been an enthusiastic patron of the cause of education, and in the district in which he lives he has been a school director many times. He was first married in 1866 to Miss Mary J. Bowen, of Texas, but she left him a widower in 1886 with a family of six children to care for: William F., Julia E., Henry Houston, Alice Adelaide, George and Mary Christina. Mr. Lynch was married, a second time, on December 5, 1886, to Sarah A. Gilbreath, a Georgian by birth, by whom he has one child, Fannie Bell, who was born November 2, 1888. Mr. Lynch and his wife have long been consistent members of the Baptist Church, and Mr. Lynch contributed liberally to the erection of a church. He is a progressive, substantial and intelligent citizen, and while modest and unassuming in demeanor, he is endowed with those very rare qualities of good sense and good judgment, which have won him many warm friends.