The Hunt for Two Children in a Custody Feud
A mother stalks her estranged husband across the region after he snatches their two young daughters from a Portland home.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
It transpired yesterday that Mrs. Frank Lynch, of Portland, was in the city endeavoring to locate her husband, who, she claims, has taken her two little children from a private home in Portland and gone away with them. The case has its foundation in domestic trouble and there is now pending in an Oregon court a suit for divorce brought by the wife. Frank Lynch, the husband, is well known in Portland, Tacoma, Olympia and Seattle as a sporting man and bartender. He married in Portland several years ago the wife who is now trying to find him and her children, two little girls, named Frankie and Eleanor. The family moved to Seattle in 1891 and took rooms in a North Seattle hotel. Lynch soon after went to work in the 'Never Touched Me' saloon. The first trouble in the family was over another woman and in the end Mrs. Lynch went back to Portland and took her children with her. Here she instituted divorce proceedings and owing to illness this spring placed the children in a private home. Lynch was in Olympia during the session of the legislature, but at the close he took a sudden idea that he would have the children and went to Portland. It is claimed that March 15 he took a hack and drove to the house where they were and demanded admittance, saying that he had come for his children and was going to take them. The woman in charge opened the door and he was inside and had taken Frankie and Eleanor to the hack and driven off before the police could be notified. She followed him to Olympia where she found he had had clothes made for the little ones, but again she was too late. She then came on to Seattle and asked Chief Jackson to assist her. Detective Cudihee took the case and worked all day Sunday and even went so far as to communicate with the Tacoma police regarding Lynch's presence in Tacoma. So far no trace of Lynch or the children in either city has been found and the theory now advanced is that he went to Victoria.
“It is claimed that March 15 he took a hack and drove to the house where they were and demanded admittance, saying that he had come for his children and was going to take them.”
Custody disputes that turn into desperate, region-wide manhunts continue to surface in headlines today, illustrating how high-stakes domestic conflicts often spill out into the civic space. While the legal systems for custody have evolved significantly since 1893, the trauma of a parent being separated from their children remains a timeless and heartbreaking narrative.
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