OF COURSE "MTA" was written to the tune of "The Wreck of the Old 97", which was written to the tune of the older song, and so on- that's the folk tradition. Bess Hawes, a very bright and also sweet-natured woman who was my Folk Music teacher in 1967, adapted a melody for her song that was commonly known and still often heard around the time of "MTA"'s writing. You can bet she didn't go rummaging around in some old book of 1850s songs hunting up an "original version" to crib from. The Almanac Singers (Woody, Butch Hawes, Millard Lampell, Pete, Bess, etc.) and lots of others from that era often wrote songs on the spur of the moment about some current event, and they just grabbed some melody that was familiar and massaged it around a little.