This hymn in C major was collected from Miss Will Allen Dromgoole in Nashville, Tennessee. She learned it in 1890 from a Mr. Tate who drove a stage on Cumberland Mountain in Tennessee. She could only remember the first verse. Subsequent verses were collected by George Pullen Jackson from the singing of Mrs, Maggie Haun of Newport, Tennessee. Her melody is not recorded and these lyrics are a difficult fit to the melody collected from Miss Dromgoole. The song is similar in both melody and lyrics to "Little Moses" that was recorded by The Carter Family in 1929. I have found no record of where A. P. Carter found the song but it seems to have been known in the Tennessee - Virginia area before the turn of the century. It was printed in Jackson's Spiritual Folk-Songs of Early America (1937).