If you read the posts in thread 6108 (clickie above), you will see that quite a bit of digging found no 19th century records of "Wade in the Water." It may be a 20th century song-spiritual-gospel, cobbled from many others.

This doesn't help much with tracing the tunes, however, which could be much older than the sets of words.
The more swinging song posted by Wilco48 which started this thread off must be 20th century gospel. I wish we could identify the singer or a version on record. Perhaps Stewie might track it down.