Old Police/Town Records?

[Cdparr7]

The past year or so I have been digging pretty deep into my family history, using ancestry and other sites to learn more.

There is a very interesting character, my great -grandfather. He was alive from the 1870s to the 1930s and lived in Spartanburg. I don’t remember my dad speaking much about him other than hearing he was  “strict” occasionally but dad is gone now, and my grandfather was dead before I was born. I really don’t have any family left that would know anything about him. He seemed to have had his had his hands in a bunch of different business and patented some things. 
 

Long story short, his death seems odd. His wife died like a year earlier “of a brief illness” and then then he has 2 different obituaries. One states he passed of a heart attack in his home after a brief illness, the other states he passed of a brief illness while being surrounded by family after suffering a heart attack a few weeks earlier. His death certificate states the cause of his death was poisoning from the exhaust of a motor vehicle.

Just curious if during that time period there would be any other records other than the death certificate? 

Edited February 12, 2023 by Cdparr7

[Anybodyhome]

If the death certificate is signed by a doctor, trace him (the doctor) back to a hospital and then try to track down any information the hospital may have. The hospital records, if intact, should be able to point you in the direction of whomever the deceased was released to (if he passed in the hospital).

You might also be able to track down the funeral home or whomever handled the burial and see if they have any records. I recently assisted a municipality in finding file cabinets full of burial records, which included a lot of medical and family information, for a black cemetery. The forensic records process is in its third year of trying to locate the families and identify an estimated 16,000 grave sites. The funeral home/mortuary had been closed for many years, but we were able to track down the file cabinets in an abandoned home belonging to a family member of one of the previous owners of the facility.

The US Patent Office is all public records stuff, too. They may be able to help you locate patent info just based off his name.

Edited February 13, 2023 by Anybodyhome

[thefuzz]

On 2/11/2023 at 11:11 PM, Cdparr7 said:

The past year or so I have been digging pretty deep into my family history, using ancestry and other sites to learn more.

There is a very interesting character, my great -grandfather. He was alive from the 1870s to the 1930s and lived in Spartanburg. I don’t remember my dad speaking much about him other than hearing he was  “strict” occasionally but dad is gone now, and my grandfather was dead before I was born. I really don’t have any family left that would know anything about him. He seemed to have had his had his hands in a bunch of different business and patented some things. 
 

Long story short, his death seems odd. His wife died like a year earlier “of a brief illness” and then then he has 2 different obituaries. One states he passed of a heart attack in his home after a brief illness, the other states he passed of a brief illness while being surrounded by family after suffering a heart attack a few weeks earlier. His death certificate states the cause of his death was poisoning from the exhaust of a motor vehicle.

Just curious if during that time period there would be any other records other than the death certificate? 

Microfilm at the library would be the best bet.

[Khyber53]

It's amazing what things geneology societies can have on hand. Here's a quick link to resources in that area. Maybe something will turn up for you. Good luck!

https://scgenweb.org/spartanburg/online_resources.htm