Sorry, goofed on the title (and the author's middle initial!):
John F. Kirkland, "Dawn of the Diesel Age: the history of the diesel locomotive in America," Interurban Press, 1983 ("Special 80" in an Interurban Press series). ISBN 0-916374-52-1.
A few random early GE serial numbers from this book:
Dan Patch Electric Lines (= Minneapolis, St. Paul, Rochester and Dubuque Electric Traction Company) !00, built 1913: serial 3763.
East Erie Commercial 1006 (a single-engined -- Dan Patch 100 had two -- GE test unit of about the same time): serial 3765.
General Electric 4 (a test unit, operated on the E.E.C., with an experimental GE diesel engine, built 1917): serial 3795.
Jay Street Connecting Railroad (waterfront switching line in Brooklyn, NY) 4 (centercab switcher, with the -- disastrously bad-- GE diesel engine: returned to GE after short service, later re-engined and used as GE test unit, built late 1918): serial 6206.
GE-IR 8835 (300 hp switcher: prototype and demonstrator for the Alco-GE-Ingersoll-Rand series, built 1923): serial 8835.
Commonwealth Edison Company of Chicago ??? (a "hybrid," with a gasoline engine and big storage batteries, demonstrated on the Chicago and Northwestern before selling to an industrial, built 1926): serial 10035.
Bush Terminal (another Brooklyn waterfront switching line) 1-7 (these were the original hood units, 300 hp switchers with the same machinery as the A-GE-IR boxcars: some of these were still in existence in the 1970s, and it is one of the tragedies of railway preservation that none were saved; built 1931): serials 11483-11489.
Delaware Lackawanna & Western 425,426 (the original prototypes of the EMD 600 hp Winton-engined switcher, built by GE for EMD -- Fairbanks-Morse wasn't the first company to get GE to build its locomotives for it! -- in 1935): serials 11653,11654.
EMC 511,512; B&O 50 (the 1800 hp box-cab predecessors of EMD's E-series passenger units, built by GE in 1935): serials 11651,11652 and 11675.
New Haven 906-910 (larger, 600 hp, hood units with eight-cylinder Ingersoll-Rand engines, built late 1936): serials 11771-11775.
Not many "data points" (and the Kirkland book only gives about as many other GE serial numbers), but enough to indicate that GE locomotive serial numbers from the beginning to today are in a single series! (This Kirkland book also has a lot about early diesel engine developments -- stationary generating plants came before locomotives -- and about early Baldwin and Westinghouse diesel locomotives. … His "The Diesel Builders" series has volumes on Fairbanks-Morse and Lima-Hamilton (one volume), Alco and Baldwin. Supposedly he was working on a GE volume at his death, and there are rumours that his notes, etc, have gone to someone who may eventually publish: we live in hope.)