Obviously there is a lot of material here. And obviously some of the decisions that I have made are quite subjective. But please feel free to point out the errors of my ways in all of this. I make no claims at expertise, and would welcome corrections and suggestions. I am going to let this rest a bit before I try to draw any conclusions from it.

My goal in bringing these two lists - Child's 18th century documentation and Coffin's list of ballads found in America - is to first of all see how many of "Coffin's ballads" are document by Child for the 18th century. The results of this comparison may suggest some starting places for deciding which ballads are the best candidates for the 18th century in America.

This would be a suggestion only. I realize that there are probably no direct lines from 18th century England & Scotland to America at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. But the fact that "Coffin's ballads" were found in the oral tradition in this later period suggests that they survived in some kind of oral setting from the 18th century.