The earliest known reference to juba dates to the 1820's. Henry Bibb (freed black, born to a slave mother), in his narrative, p. 23, deplored the encouragement by the slave holders of secular amusements, such as dancing, patting "juber," singing and playing the banjo.
Henry Bibb, 1849, "The Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave Written by Himself. Pub. by the author.

Quoting from Dena J. Epstein, "Sinful Tunes and Spirituals," section on Patting Juba.
By the 1830's serious attention was being paid to the rhythmic patterns, not by musicians, but by poets who were fascinated by its metrical complexities. Beverly Tucker described these complexities in a letter to Edgar Allen Poe, 1835. T. H. Chivers, a friend of Poe, speaks of juba as a "jig which must be accompanied by a measured clapping of the thighs and alternately on each other..."

Sidney Lanier notated Patting Juba in his "Science of English Verse," 1880, p. 189. In discussing the function of pauses in poetry, found "juba" a potent example: "I have heard a Southern plantation 'hand,' in 'patting juba' for a comrade to dance by, venture upon quite complex successions of rhythm, not hesitating to syncopate, to change the rhythmic accent for a moment, or to indulge in other highly specialized variations of the current rhythmus. Here music ... is in its rudest form, consisting of rhythm alone; for the patting is done with hands and feet, and of course no change of pitch or of tone-color is possible.
William B. Smith reported a persimmon beer dance from Virginia, some years before 1838. "Two athletic blacks...clapping Juber to the notes of the banjor...I have never seen Juber clapped to the banjor before. ... The clappers rested the right foot on the heel, and its clap on the floor was in perfect unison with the notes of the banjor, and palms of the hands on the corresponding extremities." His account included the words of a song, beginning "Juber up and juber down, Juber all around the town." William B. Smith, "The Persimmon Tree and the Beer Dance," Farmer's Register vol. 6, Apr. 1, 1838, pp. 58-61 (Epstein does not note if the entire song was reproduced).
Frances H. McDougall, in her novel "Shahmah," described "Juber" among the Negroes of Nubia and the Upper Nile.
There are many descriptions of juber by pre-Civil War writers. An important one was by Elizabeth Allen Coxe, describing not only dancing, but Negro church services in South Carolina about the time of the Civil War. At the Eutaw Plantation, "Every day of Christmas week, in the afternoon, the Negroes danced in the broad piazza until late at night, the orchestra consisting of two fiddlers, one man with bones and another had sticks with which he kept time on the floor, and sometimes singing." The ban on drums in South Carolina, enacted in 1740, apparently was still in effect.