Is this the earliest blues ever known?

Is this the earliest blues ever known?

UPDATED JULY 17 2016 In my book ‘America’s Gift’, I quote the American Blues historian, David K. Bradford, writing about the nineteenth century African-American street evangelist, Charles Haffer. Born in the 1870s, Charles Haffer was a blind Delta balladeer and songwriter from Mississippi who astutely linked the emergence of blues to the guitar’s new popularity among black musicians…