I cannot add to information on the Nicodemus song, except that it is attributed to Henry Clay Work, and written in 1864 as the Civil War was beginning to look like a victory for the North, and following the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln after the Southern withdrawal following the
Antietam Battle.
    As the the Burl Ives version, I can guarantee that it was recorded in the early 1940's, as it was among the first I listened to as a child of 2-5 between 1943 and 1946 in an Arlington, VA apartment where my parents lived during the war while my dad worked as an Army Officer in the Pentagon. The memory of that song stuck with me all these years, and I can remember most of the lyrics though I probably stopped listening to the 10" 78-rpm disk in the 1950's, if I hadn't broken it already by then. I remember that the album contained 3-5 records, and had a cover. "The Wayfaring Stranger" sounds right as the title. My father's favorite was "The Blue-Tail Fly."