The tune has been attributed to Black slave fiddler Anthony Hannibal "Black Tony" Clapp who was born in Connecticut and relocated to Setauket, New York.
Painter and music collector William Sydney Mount recalled childhood experiences of knowing Anthony ("Black Tony") Hannibal Clapp (1749-1816) and sitting at Clapp’s knee while he played folk tunes. Clapp was buried in a cemetery for people of color on land that used to belong to Mount’s grandfather.
William Sydney Mount (1807-1868) was born in Setauket, New York and he spent much of his life there and the adjacent village of Stony Brook. He was the first native-born American artist to specialize in genre painting. He was also passionate about music and a fiddle player who designed and patented several versions of his own violin which he named the "Cradle of Harmony", designed to project sound loudly enough to be heard over the noise of the crowd and had fewer parts than normal so that it could be manufactured more efficiently and affordably.
Cradle of Harmony