Hello everyone. I am attempting to find out any information I can about a fatal car accident that I believe occurred in 1954, near the Yadkin county/ Forsyth county line in North Carolina. I contacted the Highway patrol, but they said that their records did not go back that far. They suggested I try the DMV. I contacted the DMV, but their records didn't go back that far either. Does anyone out there have any idea what to try next? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. Jeff
Need help researching fatal accident from 1954
- Thread starter mopar12
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1. Newspaper Archives @ the local library or check with local historical society. If you know any participants names from accident maybe research to see if any are still alive or have local relatives that might have knowledge of the incident. If this happened in '54 depending on age most participants (if any survived) or witnesses are most likely deceased by now. Do you have any base information?
Good Luck
Good Luck
GoodGuysWearWhiteHats
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Hi, I have some non-professional experience with trying to find government records from the past, and I have sometimes been somewhat successful, so I have some tips which may help you.
I assume you want government records, because although newspapers, as others suggested, are a great source of information to get names and dates and other leads from, they are not considered official by any government entity because the information in them was not recorded by any official, and due to how common it was and still is for newspapers to be inaccurate, and the fact that newspapers can legally lie as that's protected free speech. So newspapers are not really "records" in the way that many people mean.
You can sign up for and search on
Historical Newspapers from the 1700's-2000s - Newspapers.com
The largest online newspaper archive. Used by millions every month for historical research, family history, crime investigations, journalism, and more.
www.newspapers.com
Having experienced the same frustration with government authorities claiming they have no records from an era that they should have records from, and because this is a fatal accident, you might want to try and
1) contact the local county sheriff or county police, as they may have been the first to respond, or would have responded at some point. If they don't have records, ask what happened to those records, and ask if the state might have archives of any of their old records from that.
2) You may also want to contact the county coroner or medical examiner (if local law enforcement did not already direct you to them), as a county will have one or the other, or, depending on the state, the state may be in charge of death records or investigations (though they may not have been in charge at the time, but local records should have been moved to that state agency), and you can contact that state office. You may be able to search online, if they've digitized their entire database.
3) Some states allow or allowed counties to contract with funeral home businesses to do their examinations on dead bodies, even as part of homicide investigations. That would be something to also ask law enforcement about, and then ask them who that would have been back then, and contact those funeral homes, as they may have contacts with retired morticians who heard about those cases. Those businesses tend to stay in the family, so they can ask their retired relatives or friends and family of those relatives, to see what they remember. Before the implementation of modern emergency medical services, morticians would respond to traumatic injuries or crashes in their hearses to transport any survivors or deceased to medical care or their funeral home.
4) Another possibility is to contact the local fire departments, as they might have records of the fatal crash, as they may have responded to it.
5) You can also try and contact the local library, historical society, or county museums or nearby city museums department, if any exist, and ask them to put out the word to people who may remember anything at all about that event, or who might have kept some record of it. Sometimes even a faint memory of a name or a fact can be a great lead. Those librarians and similar minded folks love to go hunting for information like that.
6) You can always ask the state archives if nobody directed you to them already, as every state usually has something similar to that. Sometimes those records are turned over to a state university archive, it depends.
7) Look for newspaper obituary records from the towns or nearby big cities from where the deceased lived, as obituaries are usually done from where the dead people lived, even if they died in another area.
8) Enter their names into the free search
Find a Grave - Millions of Cemetery Records
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www.findagrave.com
Best of luck, feel free to ask more questions or let me know if something wasn't clear, and feel free to share info on this crash and why you're interested; I'm curious.
"any information I can about a fatal car accident that I believe occurred"
...covers a wide range of things about which you can offer very little to go on! For instance, there could be several such accidents, especially if the one you have in mind occurred outside of 1954 ('52-'56?).
You might get better answers if you can provide more 'real' detail.
One possibility is to use the 1950 Census, to see who was in that area at the time -- sometimes an event such as a fatality can make a big/lasting impression on a youngster, and if you can track them down they might be of help.
JerseyWasHome2
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As GoodGuysWearWhiteHats suggested above about online newspaper searches and how not all older ones have been digitized for access online, many historical societies, and libraries large and small, even at a state level, may have microfilm of old newspapers from that location. Some may search it for you for free, some charge a small fee, and other times you'd need to find a researcher in that area who could check for you. I'm a genealogy buff and we run into this all the time. If you're not local to that area, there may be some Facebook or other online genealogy groups for that city/county and there are often helpful people willing to do lookups.
Also try these potential sources:
genealogybank.com
newspaperarchive.com
chroniclingamerica.loc.gov
Also try these potential sources:
Genealogy, Family History & Ancestry Search | GenealogyBank
Find billions of genealogy records from newspapers to obituaries and more. Discover the stories of your ancestors. Trace your family history back to 1690!
NewspaperArchive 1700s - 2024 | NewspaperArchive
Search through 16,153 historic newspaper archives to do genealogy and family history. Find obituaries, marriage and birth announcements, and other local and national news for over 9.1 billion people!
newspaperarchive.com
Chronicling America « Library of Congress
Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1756-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.
Live_and_Learn
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North Carolina Newspapers
newspapers.digitalnc.org