Hi,

After wondering about this I've started using genealogy to try and figure out the dates of some ballads in the US.

Many collectors provide detailed information, Sharp, Flanders, Cox, Beldon, Hudson, Morris, Scarborough etc.

Sharp did not provide any real detailed information but he gave the informants name, date and place the song/ballad was collected.

I started looking at Virginia 1600s and North Carolina late 1600s. There really isn't much information about the ballads but here is information about the people people who sang them. It was their ancestors who brought the ballads mainly from the British Isles.

So who was Sharp's best informant? Jane Hicks Gentry. And who were one of the most prolific families for preserving ballads and folk tales- The Hicks Family.

For example I started to do do research and some of it is here: http://www.bluegrassmessengers.com/nathan-hicks-frank-proffitt-hicks-family.aspx

The Watauga line of Hicks (Gentry/Harmon Council/ Frank Proffitt/Nathan Hicks descended from Samuel Hicks (b. 1695) of Goochland, Virgina who later moved to Granville County, NC where he died in 1772. He is related to several branches of the family that live along the James River and possibly descended from John Hix, a doorkeeper at the House on Burgess located by 1639 at Jamestown in James City County, one of the original shires.

Without going into too many details (I managed to accumulate 1,200 pages of research in the last month (see link above), it's clear that these Hicks ballads were in Virginia by 1650. Also when they family moved to remote areas in the mountains (1760s-1770s) and foothills, They preserved what they knew when they arrived. So most of the ballads can be dated circa 1770s from this family when they moved to Valle Crucis (Valley of the Cousins) and intermarried.

Further, other families from that area, Presnells, Wards and Harmons also knew their ballads at this time.

I've also started looking up the ancestry of various informants. So Cox gives this information about a version of Lord Lovel, Child, No. 75:

Communicated by Miss Lucile V. Hays , Gilner County, Novembor 22, 1916. Obtained from her mother, who learned it from her mother, and she, from her mother, Mrs. Zackwell Morgan, a woman of Welsh descent. Tune supplied by Miss Frances Sanders, who noted it from the singing of Miss Emma Hewitt, Morgantown, June, 1924.

So I figured that the date is earlier by three generation making it circa 1830s. According to a 1860 Census record, Zacquill Morgan was born 1832 and married Elizabeth, she is apparently the source of this ballad, her family was from Pennsylvania.

So an approximate date is c. 1830s and the possible source state is PA. Take a look: http://www.bluegrassmessengers.com/8a-lord-lovell--morganhays-wv-1924-child-75.aspx

So what do you think? I know this is not verifiable proof, but can we make assumptions about the date based on the informants?

Richie