The Claxton in the song was Acuff, Roy "Claxton" Acuff. He said in a interview once before he died that he just slipped the name in. Also, as for the Carter Family's involvement with the song, AP Carter collected protions of this song on one of his "lyric hunting" trips with Leslie Riddle through the Clinch Mountains. What is the original and what is not we cannot tell from his version. The people of those mountains used to swear that they heard the whistle of the Wabash Cannonball as it "climbed the flowery mountains, over hills and by the shore."