Dan,

James Pierpont (not Pierpoint) dedicated the song to John Ordway, the empresario of Ordway's Aeolians, listed in Wikipedia's "List of Blackface Minstrels" as a blackface group. Wikipedia cites William Mahar, author of "Behind the Burnt Cork: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum Popular Culture," as does Hamill. According to Hamill, "The song was first performed on 15 September at Ordway Hall by the minstrel performer Johnny Pell." According to "Monarchs of Minstrelsy, from Daddy Rice to Date," by Edward Le Roy Rice, Johnny Pell was a member of Ordway's blackface Aeolians. Unfortunately, Hamill does not cite her source for the date of the performance, but I doubt she is making it up. The article goes on to relate James Pierpont's close and continuing relationship with Ordway, during which he composed many minstrel songs for Ordway, these written in pseudo Black English Vernacular.