This information is based on newspaper accounts and other public information and is presented as accurately as possible. Before you copy and paste this information to your website, please keep in mind that this research took a lot of effort. Appreciate it. Learn from it. But do not plagiarize it. Yes, if you think we might be talking to you, we are.
I
B. S. Ivy
Foundry Foreman
Biography
B.S. Ivy joined the Western and Atlantic Railroad circa 1873.
J
M. A. Jackson
Conductor
Biography
M.A. Jackson resigned his post as conductor on the Edgefield and Kentucky Railroad in about October 1868.
Casey Jones
Engineer
Biography
John Luther “Casey” Jones (March 14, 1864 – April 30, 1900) was an American railroader who died when his passenger train, pulled by locomotive Number 382, collided with a stalled freight train at Vaughan, Mississippi.
Jones was born in rural southeastern Missouri, and his family moved to Cayce, Kentucky, after his mother, Ann Nolan Jones and his father, Frank Jones, a schoolteacher, decided that the rural areas of Missouri offered few opportunities. In Kentucky, he acquired the nickname “Cayce,” which he chose to spell as “Casey.”
Jones’ lifelong goal was to be an engineer.
After joining the Mobile & Ohio Railroad, he excelled at his job and was eventually promoted to brakeman on the Columbus, Kentucky, to Jackson, Tennessee, route. Following this, he was promoted to fireman on the Jackson, Tennessee to Mobile, Alabama route.
During the summer of 1887, a yellow fever outbreak affected numerous train crews on the Illinois Central Railroad. Jones saw an opportunity to advance his career more quickly as a fireman on that line. He joined Illinois Central on March 1, 1888, and began operating a freight locomotive between Jackson, Tennessee and Water Valley, Mississippi.
A few years later, on February 23, 1891, he was promoted to engineer.
In January 1900, Jones transferred to the “Cannonball Express” passenger run between Memphis and Canton, Mississippi, part of a run between Chicago and New Orleans.
K
John Pendleton King
President
Biography
John Pendleton King (April 3, 1799 – March 19, 1888) was a prominent attorney, railroad executive and politician who served as a United States Senator from Georgia.
King was born in Glasgow, Kentucky, in 1799, but his family moved to Bedford County, Tennessee. In 1815, the family moved to Augusta, Georgia.
King, a graduate of the Academy of Richmond County, was admitted to the bar in 1819 and started practicing law in Augusta. He married Mary Louise Woodward, and they had three children, two daughters and a son.
King’s served in the Georgia state constitutional conventions of 1830 and 1833.
He was appointed Court of Common Pleas judge in 1831 and elected to the United States Senate in 1833 as a Jacksonian, later a Democrat. He served until 1837, resigning amid a financial panic he attributed to President Andrew Jackson’s policies.
After leaving politics, King was elected president of the Georgia Railroad and Banking Company in 1841, a position he held until 1878. He promoted railroad development and cotton manufacturing in Georgia.
King’s plantation holdings included owning 68 slaves by 1860 to work his extensive cotton fields.
King’s legacy includes the city of Kingston, Georgia, named in his honor, and Pendleton King Park in Augusta, named after his grandson. The Western & Atlantic Railroad also named a locomotive in his honor.
He passed away in Summerville, Georgia, and was interred in St. Paul’s Churchyard in Augusta, Georgia.