Jones, Casey (1863-1900), was an American railroad engineer who gave his life in a train crash to save his passengers and crew. His bravery inspired a number of ballads that made him a folk hero.
Jones was an engineer on the Cannonball Express. On April 30, 1900, he volunteered to replace a sick engineer on the train’s southbound run from Memphis, Tenn., to Canton, Miss. At Vaughan, Miss., the main track was blocked by two freight trains that extended from a siding. Jones’s train smashed into the rear of the two freights. His body was found in the wreckage with one hand on the brake lever. If Jones had not stayed in the engine to jam on the brakes, the crash would have been much worse. Jones was the only person killed.
The train wreck might have been forgotten except for Wallace Saunders, a black railroad worker. Saunders wrote a song about Jones that was based on a number of earlier ballads. The vaudeville team of T. Laurence Seibert and Eddie Newton rewrote Saunders’ ballad and added it to their act. They published the song in 1909, and their version became the basis of many ballads about Jones by singers in the United States, Europe, and South Africa.
John Luther Jones was born on March 14, 1863, in southeastern Missouri. He was nicknamed Casey for Cayce, Ky., the town where he grew up.
