W. Freear was a comic performer with Moore & Burgess's Minstrels in the late 19th century.
[2] It was noted in waltz time in the key of F. The first line is "The funniest girl that I ever saw, Was sucking cider thro' a straw".
The lyrics go on to describe how a man ends up married because of sucking cider through a straw with a girl; the White-Smith sheet music advertised it as "drolly delivered to shrieks of laughter".
[3] In The American Songbag (1927), Sandburg's sources reported "Sipping Cider" as a folk song, heard in Pickens County, Georgia by one and Taylorville, Illinois by the other.
[4] "Sipping Cider Through a Straw", in numerous variations, has been part of the repertory at American summer camps for many years.