Okay so we know Thomas Snr was publishing in Boston in 1719. What we need to know now is, was that at the Bible and Heart, or even was someone selling printed stuff at the Bible and Heart from an early period. The Deming version need not be directly related to the earlier printing at all. There could easily be a century between them, plenty of time for oral tradition to have intervened or even other printed versions, or even several 'improving' hacks.

When we see imprints on London sheets of the 17thc that state the likes of 'printed and sold at the Bible and Harp' we tend to think of it being attached to an inn, but I suppose what it really means is that was the company's sign.

What is perhaps remarkable is that there has been no attempt to localise the ballad in more than a century, the Deming version still has all of the place names intact. This is usually indicative of a strong print tradition rather than an oral one.