Thanks Steve and Tim. The key point, as Tim says, is the use of the Advanced Search facility, which is what I was doing. Using the ordinary Search box worked OK (though obviously you can't refine it very much.

And, as a result of that information, I can confirm that Sharp and Karpeles did indeed sing 'The Sinner Man' for Aunt Maria Tomes.

You may be interested in what Sharp had to say about his first encounter with 'The Sinner Man', in a letter to Olive Dame Campbell [for context, 'holiness people' were Holy Roller Christian converts, usually forbidden by their preachers from singing old ballads - which were known in the mountains as 'love songs']:

“I got one very interesting song from some delightful ‘holiness’ people. I heard a woman singing and tracked her by the sound and found it was a holiness hymn... The form is that of the ballad and the tune is a very beautiful one – the singer said it didn’t come from a book, but I am wondering whether it is one of the modern hymns, of folk origins as so many of them are. The tune is a variant of ‘What shall we do with the Drunken Sailor’. The woman who sang it Mrs Samples is such a nice woman and she calls me the Sinner Man and has a fine sense of humour. Her mother sings and also her grandmother, not by any means an old woman… They are all holiness people but the grandmother doesn’t mind singing love-songs. She has known Lamkin and the Drowned Sailor if she could but recall them. I got a fine tune to some modern words The Lonesome Prairie wh[ich] I expect you know, from a Mrs Polly Patrick..."

This single extract dispels any notion that Sharp completely ignored hymns and modern songs - which has been asserted repeatedly by American writers.