We all learned this song in 1958 when the Kingston Trio released "Tom Dooley", a slow soulful version. Most Southern fiddle and banjo version are quite a bit faster.
The chain of events that led to that recording were:
In 1866, Laura Foster was murdered. Confederate veteran Tom Dula, Foster's lover and the father of her unborn child, was convicted of her murder. Dula had been the lover of both Laurie Foster and her cousin Anne Melton. Anne was suspected of being an accomplice to the murder but was acquitted at a trial. The "Grayson" mentioned in the song was Col. James Grayson, a Tennessee politician who had hired Dula on his farm when the young man fled North Carolina under suspicion and was using a false name. Grayson helped North Carolinians capture Dula and was involved in returning him to North Carolina where he was tried and found guilty. On the gallows, Dula reportedly stated, "Gentlemen, do you see this hand? I didn't harm a hair on the girl's head." He was hanged May 1, 1868.
Shortly thereafter local poet Thomas Land wrote the song. The story is, unfortunately, yet another instance of the murdered lover scenerio found in such songs as "Pretty Polly", "Omie Wise" and "Down By the Willow Garden".
In 1929, G. B. Grayson and Henry Whitter recorded a version of Land's song. In 1940, Frank Proffitt sang it for Frank Warner who passed it on to Alan Lomax who published it in Folk Song USA. The Kingston Trio got it from Warner.