Was this song recorded in the 19th century? According to the Cleveland Public Library's Index to Negro Spirituals and A. Kathleen Abromeit, An Index to African-American Spirituals for the Solo Voice (Greenwood, 1999), the records before the Second World War are:

Frederick Work, New Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers (1902)
Work, Folk Songs of the American Negro (1907)
Fisher, Seventy Negro Spirituals (1926)
James Johnson, The Second Book of American Negro Spirituals (1926) ["God's a-Gwineter Trouble de Water"]
Parrish, Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands (1942, 1992, pp. 170-172)

Sound clip of this song by the present-day Fisk Jubilee Singers is HERE.

~Masato