Lyrics and music to WERE YOU THERE? appeared in an article "Recent Negro Melodies" by William E. Barton, D.D., in The New England Magazine, Vol. XIX, No. 6, February, 1899, page 714. It was the third in a series of articles; the two earlier ones were called "Old Plantation Hymns" and "Hymns of the Slave and the Freedman." Barton doesn't name a specific source for WERE YOU THERE? but he mentions the Jubilee Singers in the earlier two articles.

All 3 articles were collected and published that same year as a book called "Old Plantation Hymns" but the book seems to be nothing more than offprints from the magazine. The book doesn't credit the magazine nor vice versa.

The annual reports of the American Missionary Association show that the Jubilee Singers sang WERE YOU THERE WHEN THEY CRUCIFIED MY LORD? at five consecutive annual meetings, 1898 to 1902. So it seems likely that the Jubilee Singers were Barton's source.

The song was published again in Folk Song of the American Negro by John Wesley Work (Nashville: Fisk University, 1915), page 100.