#1 to #14 are from American sources and likely all happened in the United States. #15 and # 16 are from European sources.
I accept that many of these are potentially unidentifiable, but even if someone recognises the make of car or the circuit, I can cross-reference it with my other records and sources to come up with a potential match. One or two may not even be race crashes. Some may be too insignificant or obscure. Anything we can't identify will end up in the recycle bin, but this is worth a try.
Thanks for any information you can provide!
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1. An eBay item, this. Seller California-based, so that may point us in the right direction. This could be pre-WW1, or soon after. It could be a fatal crash - note the damage to the steering wheel.
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2. Unknown wreck at Overland Park in Denver, Colorado, circa 1910-20. Clearly it has gone through the fence and ended up on its side. Whether fatal or not, there seem to be a lot of potential candidates.
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3. c.1914 Taber Brooks (location not person) Oregon #13 Wreck
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4. WW1 Era, Possibly USA?
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5. Pre-WWI #5 Wrecked In Fence, Avon, Rochester, USA
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6. Pre-WW1 US Dirt Track #7 Wreck
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7. From rear of photo: "This is the $8,000. racer that turned turtle the first day of the races & killed the driver. His machinist [sic] in the car was not with him when the accident happened. They boarded with us. His neck was broken."
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8. A postcard, cancelled in 1916 in Michigan. Possibly the driver leaning on the tyre. Possibly not even a race crash.
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9. Two car wreck, they're over the wall and "turned turtle".
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10. From the Henry Ford Collection, dated c.1905-1915. Michael Ferner believes it's a c.1910 Buick. The closest I can get to this theory wise, if it's a fatal crash, is Charles Hamilton at Jay County Fairgrounds in 1910: http://www.motorspor...hp?db=ct&n=9702
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11. This seems to be neither Endicott's #33 from Indy in 1913, nor Bablot in 1919. Any ideas?
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12. Item for sale on eBay is a lovely old KODAK photo album, with what appears to be images from "a day at the races".There's a very bad-looking wreck among the photos, it appears in two of the scans, specifically the first and second images on the middle row. The 8th scan has a sign, located at the top of "Big Savage", which is one of the points of the mountain range between Maryland and Pennsylvania, which may indicate where this race took place:
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13. One crash or three separate? I'd tend to believe they were separate. Nonetheless, they were posted as a 'sequence' on one website and should be related in some way. I strongly believe the bottom wreck is a Marquette Buick and the second image shows a lot of sand. Could it be Brighton Beach oval?
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14. 190x Steinhauer's #x Wreck At Cedar Rapids, Marion. Year? Vehicle?
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15. This is from a French source and listed as 1905. Note the mountainous location and the nun in the background. Significant?
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16. Five old photographic plates ("glass negatives") found on German eBay. Click to enlarge, the top one is the one to identify. There was a fatal accident on stage 5 of the 1910 III. Prinz-Heinrich-Fahrt reliability run, when the cars ran in an area which now belongs to France, and this could very well be it. The #57 Adler of Brunnhuber/Fritz Abenstedt crashed, killing both, and injuring a number of spectators.
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