John, thanks for connection with the "White Spirituals". I will definitely take a look at this. I have always been curious about the relationship of the ballads to the religious songs.

I did find a complete version of THE PIONEER SONGSTER online here:

http://www.archive.org/stream/pioneersongstert00thom#page/n5/mode/2up

It looks like 1841 is the date for the earliest part of this manuscript, but of course if these songs were being copied down at that point they were around before then. However, I couldn't find much in the way of specifics as to which ones might have been earlier or what their dates might have been.