According to this site http://www.visitmadisoncounty.com/who-we-are/traditional-music-heritage/traditional-music-today/eighth-generation-ballad-singers , the ballad-singing tradition of Madison County, North Carolina, goes back about eight generations. I was unable to figure out how the site concluded that there were eight. Cecil Sharp collected a great trove of ballads there in 1916. The difficulty is in knowing for how many generations they had been singing the ballads before Sharp came along.

Kent