It looks like the song become popular *in the United States* only after Burl Ives recorded it in 1951.

The art-music version (which is the one sung today)appeared around 1910 in Great Britain, but my impression is that it wasn't much sung in the U.S. A newspaper search finds very few references before the early '50s. After that they're everywhere.

The Philadelphia Inquirer of Dec. 6, 1903, included the song in an article on "Christmas Games in Far Places," had to give the (presumably unfamiliar)words, and described at as sung "in the West Indies" (where it had been brought "in the time of our great-grandfathers").