Newman L. White, in American Negro Folk Songs, 1928 (rep. 1965) says the earliest mention of the song that he found is in: Sarah Josepha Hale, 1853, "Liberia, or Mr. Peyton's Experiment," "where it is sung by both white people and Negroes as a familiar camp-meeting song." In white songbooks, it appears in the Zion Songster, 2ed., 1827.