The book Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War by Dena Epstein (University of Illinois Press, 1977) provides an answer. As the title suggests, the book tracks the historical mentions of black folk music in the English-speaking Americas, focusing primarily on the United States.

The earliest recorded black folk song, with music and lyrics, is found in the book A voyage to the islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica... by Sir Hans Sloane, published in 1707. According to Epstein, Sloane encountered the song in Jamaica. Sloane titled the song "Angola," and introduced it with:

"Upon one of their Festivals when a great many of the Negro Musicians were gathered together I desired Mr. Baptiste, the best Musician there to take the Words they sung and set them to Musick, which follows.

"You must clap Hands when the Base is plaid, and cry, Alla, Alla."

The words are not in English, but are phonetically transcribed, probably from either an African language, or a creole, though I do not know if anybody has ever tried to determine what language they come from.

You can see the relevant pages of the book, including the lyrics and musical notation, here.

The next song with music that Epstein found was from 75 years later, in 1782. It is found in an edition of the book A selection of Scotch, English, Irish, and foreign airs... by James Aird. The song is entitled "Pompey Ran Away," and was published without lyrics, just noting its a "Negro jig." The music notation can be seen here.

Two more jigs without lyrics that Epstein dates to before 1800 were also found. One, entitled "Negro Dance," is found in Edward Riley's 1814 Flute Melodies (Volume 1). (Sorry, I can't find a viewable copy online, but here is an unviewable one. Epstein says it's found on page 31.) The other is entitled "Congo - A Jig," and is collected in a 1972 book entitled A Little Keyboard Book: Eight Tunes of Colonial Virginia. This is presumably transcribed from an original manuscript. The music can be viewed here.

And...that's it from before 1800. Epstein thoroughly documents just how much music among enslaved black Americans was mentioned by white Americans in surviving literature before 1800 (it's quite a lot), but there is very, very little before 1800 in the way of song titles, let alone music or lyrics.

And even in the early 19th century, there's not a whole lot. There are a small handful of individual songs, but the first attempt at any compilation of black folk songs in the U.S. was the 1867 book Slave Songs in the United States. There are no dates for the songs included in this book, not that they would have been very accurate even if the authors had tried, since these were passed down via oral tradition.

But there are a few things worth noting that are mentioned in this book that give some clues. First, the authors mention that these black folk songs traveled slowly, if they traveled at all. These folk songs tended to be specific to individual plantations, and occasionally, individual cities among the enslaved black residents there. The example they give is that one of the included songs, "Graveyard," was common on a particular plantation in the winter of 1863-64, but (as far as they could tell) was not known elsewhere. Within six months of that winter, it had traveled no more than seven miles, to some immediately-neighboring plantations.

Another they mention in similar terms is a song you may have heard of - "Nobody Knows What Trouble I've Seen". The authors say that this song was very common among enslaved black residents of Charleston, SC, before the Civil War, but was unknown outside the city until after the war was over (and black Americans had more mobility).

Most of the songs in the book come from a single plantation, "Coffin's Point" in Beaumont, South Carolina, and many of the songs were probably not known outside of that plantation. Further, the authors state that at least a couple of the songs were only written after the Civil War and slavery had ended, but decided to include them anyway.

To this point, Epstein mentions that, just like slavery, black folk songs were not a static institution. Styles changed, and songs frequently became popular and then fell out of style and then were forgotten. Quite likely, the majority of the songs that survive to the present day are ones that were popular in the decades immediately before U.S. slavery ended - and, as your text suggests, many of the "Negro spirituals" are actually post-slavery creations, often by black performers shortly before or during the Vaudeville era.

But the authors of Slave Songs In the United States do mention that a handful of the songs they encountered were known outside the state of South Carolina, indicating they may be older (though the possibility that at least some were recently brought to South Carolina from travelers can't be discounted). The songs they mention in this context are: "Roll, Jordan," "Gabriel's Trumpet," "Wrestle On, Jacob," "John, John of the Holy Order," and "O'er the Crossing." You can browse the book to find the music and lyrics for each of these.

One other aspect to consider, as the authors of Slave Songs... also mention, is that many of the black folk songs came through white Americans, particular church songs. This is because of white America's literacy and access to books at the time, as well as the mobility that enjoyed that black Americans did not.

The most famous example of this is the song "Amazing Grace," as detailed by Steve Turner in his book Amazing Grace: The Story of America's Most Beloved Song. The lyrics were written in 1779 by an English clergyman, John Newton. But the music was not set at that time, and the hymn was sung to a variety of folk tunes. It wasn't until 1835 that the song was set to its modern tune, which is an older folk tune known as "New Britain". (That tune was not published until 1829, but is presumed to be much older.)

That 1835 hymnal and a subsequent one published in 1844 spread the song throughout the United States, through white churches. From there, it made its way to black Americans.

And it must have spread very quickly, because, by the time Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852, she had the character of Uncle Tom sing it (including the words to two verses), and insinuated it was already old and well-known by then.

Another song you may have heard of (maybe not) that likely dates even earlier than "Amazing Grace" is "Stewball." This one took a more circuitous route. Originally, there was an English folk ballad, first published in England as a broadside in 1784, entitled "Skewball". Skewball was a real race horse (exactly where and when, I have seen contradictory information), and the original ballad told the story about how Skewball wasn't supposed to win the big horse race, but surprised everyone and did.

This song was quite popular for a time, published over the next several decades as a broadside, as well as appearing in a handful of songbooks. It had been printed in a music book in Boston before 1825, likely from one of these earlier books published in London. But after 1825, the song more or less disappeared.

Fast-forward about a century, and the ethno-musicologists John and Alan Lomax encountered the song in prisons throughout the South before 1940. They introduced the song in their American Ballads and Folk Songs with:

"Skew Ball was an Irish race horse of broadside fame. The song came over to America and was turned into a work song by the slaves as some of the quoted stanzas will testify. And now Skew Ball has become “Stewball” and his race is sung in the prisons of Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, and Tennessee. It is the most widely known of the chain-gang songs in the states we visited, and by far the most constant as to tune and words."

This later song, however, bears no resemblance to the original song, except that it's about a horse race, and that the horse is named Skewball....er, Stewball.

While I cannot verify it for certain, the band Steeleye Span claims on their website that their version of "Skewball" is the original tune, though the lyrics beyond the first line are completely different. An 1818 copy of the broadside says that it's set to the tune "Money Makes the Mare to Go," which uses the same tune as another old song entitled "She Got Money By th' Bargain."

Regardless, this is a completely different tune than the later black folk song, as sung by Leadbelly in 1940 here.

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