From Early on  authorship of Casey Jones had a black  attribution. (Norm Cohen in his cornerstone Long Steel Rail, quotes a 1908 letter to Railroad Man Magazine attributing authorship to Saunders. In a September 10, 1911 St. Louis Dispatch feature on “Casey Jones,” (reproduced on "Casey Jones: The Man") Seibert and Newton write: “we wrote Casey Jones from an old negro song....as near as we can learn an old darky named Wallace Saunders working in a roundhouse  started the first of the ‘Casey Jones’  song (sic.)"

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Outside of this, nothing else is known about Saunders. 

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Little more is known about Siebert and Newton than about Saunders outside of mentions in press and ads for the published song and of Siebert's vaudeville work.  Nothing linked them before or after Casey Jones, both unsuccessfully tried to capitalize on their song  hit and both died prematurely and within a couple of years of each other and,  despite the financial success of "Casey Jones" (estimated  to be over a quarter million dollars each in today's value) they both died penniless.   

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