Who was the American engine driver and folk hero on the Cannonball Express who died in 1900 trying to prevent his train from crashing into a freight train?
Casey Jones Casey Jones Jonathan Luther "Casey" Jones (March 14, 1863 – April 30, 1900) from Jackson, Tennessee, was an American railroader who worked for the Illinois Central Railroad (IC). He was killed on April 30, 1900, when his train collided with a stalled freight train near Vaughan, Mississippi. His dramatic death while trying to stop his train and save the lives of his passengers made him a hero; he was immortalized in a popular ballad sung by his friend Wallace Saunders, an African-American engine wiper for the IC. As a boy, he lived near Cayce, Kentucky, where he acquired the nickname
Freight Train (folk song) Freight Train (folk song) "Freight Train" is an American folk song written by Elizabeth Cotten in the early 20th century, and popularized during the American folk revival and British skiffle period of the 1950s and 1960s. By Cotten's own account in the 1985 BBC series "Down Home", she composed “Freight Train” as a teenager (sometime between 1906 and 1912), inspired by the sound of the trains rolling in on the tracks near her home in North Carolina. Cotten was a one-time nanny for folk singer Peggy Seeger, who took this song with her to England, where it became popular in