Published: October 10, 2008 09:32 am         

Descendants of city’s founder descend upon city

Special to the Index
With tomorrow's festival celebrating the beginning of Mineral Wells and its history tied to mineral waters, how appropriate that descendants of Judge James Alvis Lynch recently visited the city.

Lynch founded Mineral Wells in 1881 after settling here in 1887 and digging some wells that produced some funny-smelling and funny-tasting water. That water proved to be liquid gold for Lynch after his mother drank the water and proclaimed she was cured of her rheumatism. Soon people from all across the nation and world learned of the magical water and came to Mineral Wells in search of better health. The town was most willing to accommodate them.

After touring the Old Rock Schoolhouse with Patsy Weaver on Oct. 3, Judge Alvis Lynch's great-granddaughter, Mary Ann (Lynch) Jamison, and family visited the Boyce Ditto Public Library.

Palin Bree, library manager, and Mary Alyce Buckner, president of the Friends of the Boyce Ditto Public Library, had a chance to speak with the family, including two great-great-great-great-grandsons of the judge.

The visit was particularly important because that branch of the Lynch family had all but disappeared from local records. It had not been well documented in Mineral Wells archives because their ancestor, a younger son, was not mentioned in Judge Lynch's will and was omitted from the “Time Was in Mineral Wells” by A.F. Weaver.

The family gave a copy of their genealogy to the Mineral Wells Heritage Association in the 1990s and promised to send an updated copy to the library when they returned home. Members of this family reside in California, Arizona and Texas and they were pleased to see that they could access from anywhere the images of early Mineral Wells and Judge Lynch online at “Portal to Texas History.” A few years ago the photos could only be viewed in copies of “Time Was in Mineral Wells” and those were becoming harder to find and very costly.

The family enjoyed their visit to Mineral Wells and promised to return again to the town their ancestor founded.

The donated photos from A.F. Weaver's personal collection have been online several years and may be seen at http://texashistory.unt.edu/browse/collection/AFWC/. Gerald Warfield, Troy Stone and a host of others have volunteered many hours to make these images available to everyone.