I hope that at least one or more of you who are regulars on this mailing list will be able to make a suggestion or two to help me, a new subscriber. After a good many years running down tons of family members in the upper South, I have only recently turned to another branch of my family and, when I did so, was surprised to discover that supposedly a great-grandfather who was born and lived as a younger man in Maryland, William H. Spies, a railroader, was not only stationed in Sunbury from at least 1872 until his death in 1879 (all three of his children supposedly were born there during that period) but, again according to family tradition, that he died in the region as a result of a train accident on April 15, 1879. It looks to me that death records in the county for that period are sketchy, at best, and I can't tell if I will be able to access any newspapers from the area way out here in central Illinois where I live or not. If anyone has any suggestions how I might proceed to find information about what might have happened back in 1879, how my great-grandfather might have died, and, indeed, where he could be buried--I assume his grave is in the Sunbury area but I am not sure--I would be most grateful. Many thanks, M. Paul Holsinger

You can try the Railroad Retirement Board. The pension records start in 1936, but they have several links for information on railroads from before that time. The web site is www.rrb.gov