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Submitted: 9/23/08 • Approved: 10/7/08 • Last Updated: 6/26/23 • R64320-G64319-S3
This Cemetery is the final resting place for:
Sarah Dunlap Lynch
08-16-1856 11-13-1901
One of the seventeen survivors of the Mountain Meadows Massacre
A member of a wagon train from Northwest Arkansas destined for California that was attacked by Mormon Militiamen and Indian allies at Mountain Meadows, Utah (near Cedar City) on September 7-11, 1857 where approximately 121 people were massacred.
Of the seventeen children that survived that survived the Mountain Meadow Massacre, none had bleaker prospects or a happier story than Sarah E Dunlap Lynch. She was found by her older sister Rebecca in her dead mother’s arms and a bullet had broken both bones in her right arm and torn the arm half off. The arm atrophied and was useless for the rest of her life. During her stay in Utah prior to being rescued, she developed an eye disease that left he blinded. After their return to Arkansas, Sarah and Rebecca lived with their uncle, James Douglas Dunlap. She went to school in Little Rock, Arkansas and eventually settled with Rebecca and her husband, John W Evans (or Evins) in Calhoun County, Arkansas. Captain John Lynch who had helped rescue the Children in Utah had retired to Texas, but he always stayed in contact with the orphans. He made a visit to the Evans and before anyone knew what happened he had wooed and won Sarah. When they married on December 30, 1893, 34 years after the rescue and 36 years after the massacre, he was 74 and she was 38. For a time they ran a store in Woodberry, Arkansas and she taught Sunday School. They moved to Hampton, Arkansas and Sarah died there on November 13, 1901. James provided her an ornate gravestone and vault that “were proof of the tenderness he felt for Sarah.” For decades the community would recall that he “never tired how he rescued her from the Mormons.” James lived until April of 1910 and was buried next to her in a grave that was unmarked for some time. It now has a marker.
For further information see: Mountain Meadows Massacre Memorial
For Captain Lynch see Captain Lynch
Contributed on 9/23/08 by debbraszymanski
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Record #: 64320