Source: Crawfordsville Sunday Star 27 Feb 1899 The man who held the throttle of the little coffee-pot wood-burning locomotive which hauled the first train that ever came to Crawfordsville that being on the railroad running between here and Lafayette died at the poor farm on Friday night. He was 84 years old. A month ago a stranger came here and bought a lot at Oak Hill Cemetery and paid funeral director D.C. Barnhill for a first class casket and hearse attendance for the old man. He ordered Mr. Barnhill as soon as the old man was dead to take immediate charge of the body and give it a respectable burial. The old man was then dying. He did so and the poor old fellow sleeps in Oak Hill tonight. The unknown man is supposed to be a distant relative of Gerbrick. When Mike brought the first train to Crawfordsville he was the hero of a big public reception given at the home of the honored Col. I.C. Elston, Sr. then the leading man of the town, and it was honor for the fair ones for the day to dance with him. Whisky was his curse. He neglected his family and they died off or disappeared. A half-witted son still lives at the farm, an object of charity.