I don't know about collectors vs records. There was remarkably little collecting done in West Virginia, and a lot of tunes just got passed around and evolved. I don't know if Lester's version was the first recorded or not. As Hoot noted, probably evolved from Old Reuben.

This speculation "This tune, Cherry River Line, is an example of an old West Virginia mountain song that has evolved into a fiddle tune. It is clearly a close variant of Old Reuben, with the words modified to fit the local geography. The Cherry River is a tributary of the Gauley River in southeastern West Virginia. There is still a lot of logging in this area, and at one time the lumber companies had private railroads that transported the timber from the logging camps to lumber and paper mills in mountain towns located nearby. The Cherry River Boom & Lumber Co. ran a line along the Cherry River that brought wood to mills in Richwood, located along the river, and it may well be the line the song is talking about. Richwood is about 40 miles northeast of Clifftop." is found at http://www.banjr.com/roberts.htm.

Many WV fiddlers have played it. Can't recall if Glenn Smith played it. Lester certainly did. I think Melvin Wine played it. John Morris does. Back in the early 1970s, before I moved away, there were a number of elderly banjo and fiddle players who played it. Was always done as a banjo or fiddle tune, almost never sung.