This is the link to "Kid mudcateers" thread. If my memory is correct, dancing limber jacks can be seen in Alan Lomax's video Appalachian Journey. Description is in Dick Schnacke's American Folk Toys: How to Make Them (Penguin Books, 1973, pp. 42-43).
Correction to my post above: Botkin did not quote a whole chapter; it's about two thirds of it. I've just read it in Japanese, which is in Selected Writings of Lafcadio Hearn [Japanese translation], vol. 1 [An American Miscellany] (Kobunsha, 1980, pp. 135-163; the title is "Levee Life").

~Masato