The version from the 1913 "Railroad Mans Magazine" (Joe Offer) and the 1915 version from Cox are very similar. Cox also printed versions with the 'murder' chorus, collected in 1915-1916. The first versions were printed some 20-25 years after the accident. The author(s) remain(s) unidentified. Cohen (Long Steel Rail) presents pretty good evidence that the song was going the rounds in 1905-1907, but nothing definite was found from the 1890's. Cohen suggests that the errors in the song perhaps suggest that it appeared some years after the accident and details had been forgotten.
The songs have George Alley's hair as golden, but it was black and straight. A photograph of Alley was included by Cohen in "Long Steel Rail," showing an attractive young man with neatly cut dark hair and mustache. He was thirty years old when the accident occurred.

The Carter version has Alley's last words as "Nearer my God to thee," this may have been taken from the ten cent broadside "Wreck on the C. & O. Railroad at Clifton's Ford, Va.;" "as sung by Bailey Brisco, with Dakota Jack, the Cow Boy Medicine Man (reproduced in Long Steel Rail).

Perhaps mentioned above, the first recording was made by George Reneau, Aeolian Vocalion, New York, Sept. 16, 1924.