This, from Louis Albert Banks, Immortal Songs of Camp and Field (Cleveland: The Burrows Brothers & Company, 1899 [copyright 1898], p. 100), may be one of the earliest records of "Aunt Rhody."

The way was opened for this song ["John Brown's Body"] through a campaign song heard from the lips of the Douglas, and the Bell, and the Everett Campaign Clubs, who, in order to spite Governor John A. Andrews, the famous war governor of Massachusetts, sang the following lines as they were marching through the streets of Boston, with their torches in hand,--

             "Tell John Andrew,
               Tell John Andrew,
               Tell John Andrew
               John Brown's dead.
                         Salt won't save him,
                         John Brown's dead."

These lines are supposed to have been an imitation of the doggerel,--

             "Tell Aunt Rhody,
               Tell Aunt Rhody,
               Tell Aunt Rhody
               The old goose is dead.
                         Salt won't save him,
                         The old goose is dead."