Accident
Accidents were the leading cause of death in the CSI:D sample, and drowning was the leading cause of death among mortal accidents. There are myriad reasons why. Broad swaths of the American public did not know how to swim. Primary modes of transportation, especially early in the century, involved river routes. Mill ponds were prevalent. Children played outside—generally a good thing but occasionally a sad one. Perhaps the saddest of these incidents involved a mass May Day drowning at Boykin Mill Pond in 1860. Twenty-eight teenagers set off on a raft that hit a snag and more than twenty-five drowned, including all five children from one family. Sadder still may be the case of Noah Wesley Dawkins. In mid-June 1888, Dawkins and his friends, all African Americans, set off for a local watering hole where they ran into three white boys, one of whom offered Dawkins fifty cents if he would walk into a particular area in the creek, assuring him it wasn’t deep. It was deep, and Dawkins drowned. It is tempting to classify this as a homicide, but it is clear from testimony that the white children thought they were playing a cruel trick, not a deadly one.

Alcohol was such a critical indirect cause in so many of the accidental drownings, shootings, fires, and falls in CSI:D that it really ought to be regarded the deadliest force in nineteenth century South Carolina. In addition to these indirect roles, alcohol was the direct cause of accidental death in more than sixty cases. It was probably also a direct cause in many of the ‘exposure’ cases—bodies that were discovered outside and were thought to have died from exposure to the elements.
Nineteenth century law enforcement had no recourse to blood-alcohol tests. Even today, determining precise BACs postmortem, and working back from those to levels of inebriation at time of death, is fraught with difficulty. This meant that nineteenth-century coroners had to rely exclusively on witness testimony and the known habits of the deceased to determine alcohol’s role in producing death. Standing around a dead man, jurors found themselves passing judgment on just how drunk he had been the night before. According to witnesses, John Goodlett “seemed to be drunk.” John Agner was “sorry he was drunk.” Abe Waganan was “very funny & lively”—very drunk as [was] his custom.” Is ‘very drunk’ drop-dead drunk? It is hard to know. On the night of January 15, 1816, Angus McQueen drank more than half a gallon of spirits. “The dec’d was very much intoxicated,” noted one witness, “and fell down four times during which time he vomited upon the carpet.” Because McQueen kept getting up and falling down, the jurors determined that the falls (and the winter cold) contributed to his demise, though it is equally possible that McQueen died of alcohol poisoning. Juries were more likely to fix upon ‘intemperance’ as a clear cause of death if the deceased was a notorious addict. In December 1842, H. P. Church was discovered by his land-lady sprawled half on and half off of his bed. A “habitual drunkard” who had been continuously drinking for two weeks, she did not even bother to try and shake him awake. The inquest did not hesitate in finding that Church had died of intoxication.
The third leading cause of accidental deaths were ‘vehicular’ accidents, a catch-all category that includes drunken falls from a train and sober buckings from a horse. Further complicating this picture is the fact that many of the drownings probably belong in this category. There is little difference between falling unwitnessed off of a train and off of a boat, except that in one case you land on tracks and are quickly found where in the other you wash downstream, far from the site of the accident.
Bartholomew Darby was thrown from the saddle and hit his head on a stump, his wagon then “running over his head ... & breaking his neck & deeply cutting him under the right ear.” Steve Yeldell fell out of his cart and broke his neck.
All such accidents pale in comparison to the staggering mortality brought to South Carolina by train. Richard Springs was “run over by a train.” Fannie Ford was “run over by a train.”A slave named Sam was “Run over by [a] train.” Almost as soon as trains arrived in these counties, there were sots to fall off of them, laborers to be crushed by them, and depressives to jump in front of them. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a technological innovation responsible for a sharper uptick in the per capita death rate. It is also clear that coroners and inquest juries were unprepared for the level of bodily violence meted out by train. The body of a slave named Berry was “very much mashed and limbs and bones severed.” William Abbott’s body was “mangled, bruised, cut and crushed.” Even so coroners and their juries were often at pains to absolve the railroad itself of any wrong-doing. Hosea Jackson “came to his death by his own carelessness and from no carelessness whatever on the part of the engineer.” The crushing of William Roberts was likewise “not caused by any dereliction of duty on the part of the rail-road employees.” With train accidents we see for the first time the question of corporate responsibility, and potential corporate liability, creeping into the inquest process.
The larger point, however, is a physical one. Moving the body at a faster speed than the body was designed to go is an enormous convenience that has to be paid for. Today vehicular accidents (car, motorcycle, and all-terrain-vehicle) are the fourth-leading cause of death among Americans after heart disease, cancer, and stroke. The nineteenth century was not particularly different, except that families moved by horse, wagon, and train—and died less often of cancer.
The fourth leading cause of accidental death in the CSI:D sample involved the discharge of firearms. Some were simple cases of men who were cleaning or handling weapons that suddenly went off. The vast majority of cases, however, involve an unfortunate bystander. In 1849, Tilman Attaway was mistaken for a turkey by his hunting buddy. In 1808, James Spradley was leaning in to watch two dogs fight over a dead deer. Fourteen-year old George Nettles sought to break up the dogs by bashing one of them with the butt of his gun. Instead the gun discharged into Spradley’s face. As this case attests, guns and children made as disastrous a pairing then as they do now. In 1820 ten-year old Mancel King accidentally shot and killed his brother. In 1899 ten-year old John McManus shot and killed his friend. “I was fooling with the pistol and it went off,” he told the inquest.
Undoubtedly some of these gun-related ‘accidents’ were not accidents at all. A dead man alone in a room might have been cleaning his gun, or he might have harbored hidden miseries. Similarly some of the accidental misfires on bystanders were probably intentional homicides. Unless new evidence emerges at this late date, however, such cases will have to remain categorized as accidents.
The fifth leading cause of death by accident in the CSI:D sample was death by suffocation—another category that speaks more to what a coroner was called to investigate than to what people actually died from. A majority of the ‘smothering’ deaths were probably SIDS victims. In white households such cases would not have been investigated—infant mortality was relatively high in the period and a white family’s ‘dear pledges’ were often ‘recalled to God.’ But in a society where every enslaved child was as potentially valuable as a Lexus, infant death in the quarter was more rigorously investigated. Coupled with deep prejudices against enslaved mothers, inquests typically found that an unnamed “negro Child” was “negligently Smothered” by its mother, or that the enslaved child Lora was “accidentally smothered” in the family bed, or that the enslaved children Henry and Alcy were crushed in the night, having being “overlaid” by their parents. It is possible that such ‘negligence’ did occur among overworked and overtired slaves, and such findings were far preferable to those cases where enslaved parents were charged with infanticide.
The sixth leading cause of death by accident in the CSI:D sample was death by fire. Most homes in the period were made of wood. Most had fireplaces. None had a fire extinguisher. Fire was light and life, but it was also occasionally death. In 1866 a freedman named Sloan was burnt to death in a gin house. In 1890 a child named Julia Hightower wandered too close to the family fireplace. Her younger sister tried to dowse her with water to no avail.
These six types of accidental death—drowning, alcohol abuse, transportation mishaps, gun miscues, suffocations, and fires—account for 75% of the accidental deaths in the CSI:D sample. Other relatively common accidents involved falling trees and limbs, industrial accidents, and poisonings and overdoses. Rounding out the sample were accidents that were more unique. Home alone, Medora Williams had an epileptic seizure and fell into her own fireplace. Traveling with the Bailey & Company circus, George West was gored by his own elephant. (Some might not consider this an ‘accident’ since the elephant had ‘cause’; and acted with ‘intent.’)
NEXT: Natural Causes
Accident Inquests
Name | Deceased Description | Date | Inquest Location |
Death Method![]() |
Inquest Finding |
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Lilla Olophant | female infant | August 18, 1879 | at Simpton[?] Pinns[?], Edgefield County, SC |
do say that the deceased came to her death by accidental drownding on Sunday evening ... crossing Logg creek |
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Joe | infant negro | August 26, 1860 | at John Huiets, Edgefield County, SC |
upon there oaths do say that the child was over laid by his Farther dick |
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Nancy Crawford | August 9, 1876 | at Cooly's Grave Yard, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that she came to her death. . .near the door of her house (being in labor) by misfortune or accident |
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John Groce | June 12, 1876 | at John Groce's, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that he John P. Groce came to his death . . . by accidental drowning in the mill pond of W J Bates while bathing in company with P D Bates, Morgan Flynn and Benjame Cannon[?] |
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Daniel Fountain | Unknown, Fairfield County, SC |
upon their oaths [do] say that he was shot accidentally by [a] pistol in the hands of his brother [?] Fountain about seven years old, about three Oclock yesterday evening and died [?] morning near Wallaceville[?]. |
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Samuel Brock Sr. | March 23, 1884 | at Samuel Brocks Sr, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths, do say: That the Said Samuel Brock Sr came to his death by being burned to death in his own hous supposed accidently |
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Dorcas Page | May 5, 1860 | at Boykin's Mill, Kershaw County, SC | |||
Harris Hotchkiss | March 12, 1821 | at Thomas Hugh's, Union County, SC | |||
John Henry Goudelock | June 3, 1882 | at Bethlehem Grove Church, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that he came to his death by being burned in the dwelling house of Jane Goudelock which is included in Laurens County, State of South Carolina. The cause or origin of the said fire is to this jury unknown. |
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Lafayette Valentine | January 1, 1873 | at Jack Valentines, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Lafayette Valentine came to his death by the accidental firing of a Pistol in the hands of J.B. Watts. |
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infant | infant | December 15, 1892 | at Mr. Pleasant Grave Yard, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that said child. . .came to his death by accidental Suffocation |
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Unknown | July 13, 1830 | at Rocky Mount Ferry, Fairfield County, SC |
do say upon their oaths that upon the evidence adduced that the said child was found on the evening of the 18th Inst. found in a fish Trap near the above named ferry prior to that time they are not able to asertain and from not being able to asertain any marks of violence do believe to[?] come to its death by being drowned |
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George Wilkins | January 7, 1886 | Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say taht George Wilkins came to his death by misfortune or accident from a gun shot in the hands of Jack Lewis |
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slave | slave | January 17, 1827 | near McRae's mills, Kershaw County, SC |
do say upon their oaths that he came to it by intemperate drinking & exposure to the cold in an open field |
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Unknown Colored Man about 60 years old | Unknown Colored Man about 60 years old | May 15, 1893 | on the plantation of D.D. Simpson, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oathes do say that the said colored man came to his death from inflamation of the left hand and arm of phlegmonous character and for want of proper attention, that he died some time about the 13th inst. |
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Benjamin Franklin Zimmerman | June 18, 1932 | near Patrick, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the deceased came to his death by accidental drowning in the waters of big Juniper creek-1/2 miles north East of the Town of Patrick, S. C. |
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Washington | negro man | February 1, 1857 | at Pullok[?], Union County, SC |
upon there oaths do say that they believe Decsd Came to his death by misfortune though intoxication & exposure to rain & cold |
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Jerry | May 16, 1808 | at the Mill House of Henry Brockman, Laurens County, SC |
do say upon their oaths, the said Negrow man Jerry came to his Death by being Intoxicated in Liquor and Indeavoring to cross the Enoree River... between Laurens & Spartanburgh Districts that then & there the sd. Negrow Jerry got strangled sufficated & Drowned & from all appearance contrary to the wife sd. Negrow by mischance or accident. |
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Thomas | child of Thomas M Chandler | September 11, 1850 | at Thos M. Chandler's house, and at the old Pottery, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say, that the deceased came to his death on the 8th ist by accidental drowning |
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Peter Gadsden | November 28, 1873 | near Doko[?], Fairfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say: That on the night of the twentieth day of November 1873, before the hour of midnight the said Peter Gadsden being alone in the house, on the Plantation of L.M.[?] Bookhart[?] was burned to death by the accidental catching of fire to the building near the chimney which resulted int he destruction of the building and the death of said Peter Gadsden, and that...Peter Gadsden...came to his death by accidental burning |
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William Bently | March 21, 1851 | at Wm Bently's, Union County, SC |
upon their oaths doo say that the said Wm Bently came to his death . . . by a wall plate that fell from the top of the house which he was Building which was by misfortune or accident |
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James Edward Settle | boy | March 9, 1884 | on Henry Hill Plantation, Edgefield County, SC |
do say upon there [?] that said James Edward Settle Came to his death from Epellepcy and Starvation |
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infant | April 15, 1879 | at the house of Mrs. Mary Smith, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the infant aforesaid came to its death ... from the ignorant neglect of said child by Sarah D. Smith, the mother of said child without intent to murder the child upon her part |
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infant female | infant female | November 25, 1880 | at T. H. Long, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that . . . the said infant came to its death by being smothered by its Mother accidentally while she was asleep in bed |
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Cornelius Johnson | at Samuel Johnson's Residence, Fairfield County, SC |
upon their Oaths do say that the deceased came to his death [at] his Fathers house, on the 15 [Dec] 1892 from burns frm Accidentaly catching on f[ire][.] |
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William Sandy Little | June 18, 1890 | at the Belk Place, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do Say that the Said W.S. Little came to his death by accient from falling in the well & being drowned |
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Fannie Patton | November 18, 1898 | at Francis Williams house, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that upon examination find that Fannie Patton Came to her death by accidental Drowning |
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Bluford Papley | November 3, 1889 | on the plantation of Thos L Badgett, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Bluford Paply came to his death ("by the Explosion of Thos L Badgetts Boiler") |
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Mike | negro man | September 13, 1844 | at Dr John D. Nicholsons Mill, Edgefield County, SC |
upon there oaths do say that the said deceased came to his death at the said Mill the tenth instant when the said Mill broke and washed away, and at the falling in of the mill the deceased received a wound over his right eye which stuned him and caused him to drown |
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Handy Papley | November 3, 1889 | on the plantation of Thos L Badgett, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say - that the said Handy Papley came to his death "by the Explosion of an Engine boiler." |
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William Lundy | August 28, 1846 | at house of John Rainsford, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that decd came to his death by the accidental discharge of a shot gun that was in his hands the load entering his left temple and passing out of the top of his head carrying part of the brain & skull off |
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Rachel McBurney | October 21, 1833 | in the house of Major James Barkley, Fairfield County, SC |
do say upon their oaths, that according to the evidence adduced, they believe that on the morning of the 20th this instant, or some time in the night of the 19th, a small house adjoining the dwelling of the said Major James Barkley, occupied by said Rachel McBurney as a Bed Room, caught fire, how, not known, was consumed with the contents, and her, the said Rachel. |
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James Baldwin | infant | June 8, 1825 | at William Dilliard's plantation, Union County, SC |
do say upon their oaths that the said James Baldwin came to his death by an accident, occasioned by his elder brother Henry Baldwin tying a Rope around his the said James Baldwin neck and fastening one end of said rope to a [?] fastened in the joist and the said Henry going off and leaving of it in that situation ... as a reason for tying the said child was that he was subject to eating of dirt and Salt[?] and that his brother done it to prevent him from getting the same whilst he was in the field at work |
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William Pettifoot | free black | January 21, 1847 | at Camden, Kershaw County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the deceased came to its death by being accidentally overlaid & smothered in the course fo the night by its mother |
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Anthony | slave | July 2, 1853 | at Samuel J. Hannond's plantation, Anderson County, SC |
do say the deceased came to his death by causes unknown. We find marks or bruises on the right side of the head and behind the right ear. We find no more marks or bruises on the deceased more than what might have been made by a fall. |
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A. R. Steel | girl child | August 28, 1869 | at Graniteville, Edgefield County, SC |
the said A.R. Steel came to her death do say That the deceased came to her death by an act of Providence [?] accidentally falling into a tub of water about six inches deep |
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Earl Rivers | October 14, 1909 | [no location given], Chesterfield County, SC |
Upon hearing the above evidence I decided that it was accidental and it was not necessary to have a formal inquiry Saul H. Reid |
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Alexander Martin | September 8, 1867 | at the residence fo B.W. Knight, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said Alexander L. Martin came to his death by the falloing of a tree some of the limbs striking dec'd on the back of the head neck and shoulders |
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Priner Davis | near Simm Davis' Spring, Fairfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said Priner Davis came to his death from apoplectic Fit-brought on by drinking bad whiskey and exposure near the Public Road in Fairfield Co SC, leading form Winnsboro to Kincades Bridge on or between the night of the 13th and the morning of the 15th of January 1883[.] |
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John Pinson | September 2, 1858 | at [?] Pinson residence, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that he came to his death by accidental drowning . . . near McBees Mills in Reedy River |
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Samuel F. Evans Sr. | January 23, 1878 | at Chesterfield C. H., Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say That the Said Samuel F. Evans Sr. came to his death by accidental burning |
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Brice | slave | February 19, 1859 | at the residence of Joseph Murphy, Kershaw County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said negro slave came to his death by the. . .striking of the head upon the stump of a tree while running through the woods |
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John Findley | March 22, 1819 | at [??] ferrey, Union County, SC |
do say upon their oaths that . . .he came to his Death by atemping to Cross the River at horvels[?] ferry alone when in Liquer and by Mischance was Drowned |
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William Moore | April 15, 1893 | in a lake near little river, Laurens County, SC |
Being a lawful Jury of inquest and being charged and sworn to inquire for the State of S.C. how and by what means the said Wm. Moore came to his death on the 14th of April inst. In Laurens County By Accidental drowning, in a lake near little river. |
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Rody Kennedy | November 30, 1830 | at the house of Rody Kennedy, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said Rody Kennedy came to his death on the morning of this day on his own plantation by means of the contents of a loaded shot gun being discharged in his body. The Jurors aforesaid say they have no positive evidence the gun was discharged, but from the circumstances coming before them and have no doubt it was discharged by the said Rody Kennedy himself. |
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Everett Hook | July 18, 1891 | at the saw Mill of M J Hook, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say by accidently falling upon a cicular Saw While in Motion |
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Will Smith | December 9, 1882 | at Reidville, Reidville, S.C., Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say by pistol shot accidentally & falling from the mantel piece ... that the said Will Smith ... came to his death by accident |
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Sarah Arledge | April 22, 1812 | at Meeting House Branch, Kershaw County, SC |
do say upon their oath that the said infant child as aforesaid came to its death by being lost in the woods & perished to death by hunger and cold on the night of the twelfth of this Instant on Meeting House Branch |
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Unknown | July 2, 1880 | at Samson Campbell, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do Say That the deceased came to his death by being accidently smothered by his mrother on the first day of July A D 1880 |
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Glasco Ferly | at the house of Glasco Ferly, Fairfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say: That the said colored Ferly came to his death by a gunshot wound accidentily inflicted upon himself |