American Language Supplement 2 (132 page)

1
e.g
., M. Schele de Vere, p. 620, and Shankle, p. 129.

2
Albany
Microscope
, March 27. The same article also referred to gunflints made of horn, and buttons made of basswood. In 1826 Timothy Flint, in his Recollections of Ten Years Passed in the Valley of the Mississippi, added straw baskets and “pit-coal indigo,” apparently an anticipation of the synthetic indigo suggested by Adolf Baeyer in 1880. In 1833 S. A. Hammett, in A Stray Yankee in Texas, added wooden hams, and in 1838 a Western paper quoted by the Baltimore
Commercial
added cast-iron axes. I am indebted here to Thornton.

1
Hooker (
c
. 1586–1647) was an English Puritan clergyman who was driven to Holland by Laud, then Bishop of London, and in 1633 proceeded to New England. He became pastor of a flourishing congregation at Cambridge, and a man of mark in the colony. In 1636 he and his people migrated to the Connecticut Valley. In 1643 he had a hand in organizing the United Colonies of New England, the remote progenitor of the United States.

2
See Supplement I, p. 211.

3
p. 441. I am indebted here to Dr. Joseph M. Carrière.

1
p. 658.

2
This book is not to be confused with the magazine
Brother Jonathan
.

3
Written in 1873 or thereabout. These notes are now in the possession of Dr. Atcheson L. Hench, of the University of Virginia.

4
I am indebted here to Mr. Bradford F. Swan, of the Providence
Journal
.

5
I take this from the DAE.

1
By Gerald W. Johnson, Frank R. Kent, H. L. Mencken and Hamilton Owens: New York, 1937, p. 389.

1
Proclaimed on Dec. 6, 1922, after a struggle with England that had gone on off and on since 1171. Under the new constitution of Dec. 29, 1937 the name was changed to
Eire
.

2
The
Orange Free State
declared its independence on Feb. 23, 1854. It was annexed by England on May 24, 1900, and became the
Orange River Colony
.

3
There is a
Free State
Brewery in Baltimore, and also a
Free State
Roofing Co., a
Free State Oil
Corporation, a
Free State
Press, and a chain of
Free State
grocery-stores.

4
The boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania, run in 1763–67 by two English surveyors, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon. It was, until the Civil War, the dividing line between the free States and the slave States, and is still generally regarded as marking off the North from the South. The actual division between the two sections, culturally and politically, runs an irregular course through Maryland, crossing below Baltimore. The Northern counties of the State belong either to the Appalachian or to the Pennsylvania cultural spheres.

1
Boston, 1928, p. 155.

2
One of the races run at the Wilmington track is the
Diamond State Stakes
.

1
I owe this to Shankle.

2
The Southern name for the battle known to Northerners as
Antietam
. It was fought at Sharpsburg, Md., on Sept. 16 and 17, 1862.

1
Zebulon B. Vance (1830–94) was an opponent of Secession, but when his State left the Union raised a company which became part of the Fourteenth North Carolina Infantry, C.S.A. He was later elected colonel of the Twenty-sixth North Carolina, and commanded it in the Seven Days’ Battles of the Peninsula campaign, June 25-July 1, 1862. While still in the field he was elected Governor of his State. On May 20, 1864, he was imprisoned, but was released on July 5. In 1870 he was elected to the United States Senate. He was refused admission, but was reëlected in 1879, and served in the Senate thereafter until his death.

2
The Graham speech, the theme of which was Agricultural Achievements in North Carolina, was delivered before the Southern Commercial Congress at Muskogee, Okla., April 25, 1915. Graham was then commissioner of agriculture in North Carolina. The speech was reprinted in the Miami (Fla.)
Daily News
, Nov. 19, 1925, and in
American Speech
, March, 1926, p. 355 It is from the latter that I take it.

1
The DAE says that this was “moonshine whiskey of a low grade.”

2
Clay-eating is an aberration known to pathologists as chthonophagia or geophagism. It is encountered only in persons of low mentality, and is usually accompanied by theological delusions of an extravagant character.

1
Cf
. the German
krachen
and the American
wise-crack
and
wise-cracker
.

2
Letters From the United States, Cuba and Canada, by the Hon. Amelia M. Murray; New York, 1856, p. 324. I am indebted for this to Dr. Joseph M. Carrière.

3
Advertisement of the
Journal
in the
Editor and Publisher
, July 15, 1944, p. 25.

1
See Nicknames of the States: a Note on Walt Whitman, by John Howard Birss,
American Speech
, June, 1932, p. 389.

1
Another and far less probable etymology is given in Alabama: a Guide to the Deep South, in the American Guide Series; New York, 1941, p. 128.

2
There is a weekly
Wonder State Herald
in Kensett, Ark., population 889.

1
The history of the
Bowie-knife
has been heavily labored by historians, with no general agreement. The most plausible account of it is in The Bowie Brothers and Their Famous Knife, by Matilda Elanor Bowie Moore, a daughter of Rezin P. Bowie,
Frontier Times
(Bandera, Texas), Feb., 1942, pp. 199–205. Mrs. Moore was long dead in 1942, but she had prepared a history of the Bowies during her lifetime, and this was sent to the
Frontier Times
by her granddaughter, Mrs. Bessie Bird Moore Bryant. It showed that the
Bowie-knife
was invented by Rezin after he had been seriously wounded by a hunting knife with which he had attempted to cut the throat of a wild heifer. The thought occurred to him that this “could have been prevented had there been a guard between the blade and handle of the knife.” He accordingly had the blacksmith of his plantation on Bayou Boeuf, La., make a new one of a broad file, with such a guard affixed. His daughter testified that he intended it to be used as a hunting knife only. But its usefulness for homicide soon attracted public attention, and in a little while it was the weapon of choice of the whole Southwest. The Bowies were descendants of a Scotsman who immigrated to America during the Eighteenth Century, along with two of his brothers. He settled in Natchez, Miss., but his brothers chose Maryland, and there they became the progenitors of a number of distinguished men, including Oden Bowie, Governor of the State from 1868 to 1872. Oden Bowie was a Democrat, and his election marked the final rescue of the State from the abhorred damyankee. I am indebted to Judge Robert T. Neill, of San Angelo, Texas, for the
Frontier Times
. See also
Bowie Knife
, by Eston Everett Ericson,
American Speech
, Feb., 1937, pp. 77–79.

1
I am indebted for this to Dr. Joseph M. Carrière.

2
Dorado
is Spanish for golden, or gilt.

3
Eureka
is Greek for “I have found it.” The NED says that it should be spelled
heureka
. It is the legendary exclamation of Archimedes (
c
. 287–212
B.C
.) on his discovery of a way to determine, by specific gravity, the amount of base metal in a golden crown of King Hiero II of Syracuse (
c
. 308–216
B.C
.). He made the discovery in a public bathhouse, and was so excited by it that he ran home naked.
Eureka State
is traced by Charles J. Lovell to 1857; the DAE overlooks it.

1
A Book of Nicknames, by John Goff; Louisville, 1892, p. 13, quoted by Shankle.

2
There is a weekly called the
Sucker State
at Mahomet, Ill., population 729.

3
A Winter in the Far West; London, 1835, I, p. 207n. This book was also published in New York during the same year as A Winter in the West.

1
June, p. 133.

2
A reference to Genesis XLII, 2: “And he said, Behold, I have heard that there is corn in
Egypt;
get you down thither, and buy for us from thence; that we may live, and not die.”

3
The following is from The Field, the Dungeon and the Escape, by Albert D. Richardson; Hartford, Conn., 1865, p. 186: “ ‘
Egypt
to the rescue!’ is the motto upon the banner of a new Illinois regiment. Southwestern Illinois, known as
Egypt
, is turning out men for the Mississippi campaign with surprising liberality.”

1
The Word
Hoosier, Indiana Magazine of History
, Vol. VII, 1911, p. 62.

2
Dunn was born in 1855 and died in 1924. He was secretary of the Indiana Historical Society from 1886 until his death. He was on the staff of the State library from 1889 to 1893, on that of the Indianapolis
Sentinel
from 1893 to 1904, and city comptroller of Indianapolis from 1904 to 1906 and again from 1914 to 1916. He was the author of the volume on Indiana in the American Commonwealth Series, of a History of Indianapolis published in 1910, and of a book called Indiana and Indianans, published in 1919.

3
The Word
Hoosier, Indiana Historical Society Publications
, Vol. IV, No. 2; Indianapolis, 1907, p. 4.

4
Bound in Shallows; New York, 1897, p. 142. I take this reference from the DAE.

5
No printed copy of the
Journal
of Jan. 1, 1833 is known to exist, but Dunn had access to a copy of the poem in the possession of the poet’s daughter, Mrs. Sarah Wrigley, and on it the date was noted. It is probable that Finley made the copy after the poem was published, and changed the spelling of his title. The DAE traces
Hoosheroon
to 1834, by which time it had come to signify an adult as well as a child.

1
i.e
., on the frontier.

2
Traced by the DAE to 1834, but probably older.

3
Defined by the DAE as “an appellation used by or about boasting frontiersmen and boatmen in the West.” James K. Paulding, in his Westward Ho!; New York, 1832, Vol. I, p. 83, hinted that it embodied the idea that the boatmen were amphibious, and could proceed overland as well as afloat. The DAE’s earliest example is dated June 12, 1812, but Thornton shows that the term had occurred in Washington Irving’s Knickerbocker’s History of New York, 1809. Thornton presents many examples from the 20s and 30s. The term was often reinforced with additions,
e.g., and a little of the snapping turtle, part earthquake and a little steamboat
, etc. It was an important constituent of the Tall Talk of the frontier, for which see AL4, pp. 136 and 137.

4
I take this from Dunn’s 1907 paper, p. 11.

5
The term is not noted by either the DAE or Thornton.

1
London, 1856, p. 338.

2
In his 1907 paper, p. 12.

3
John Jacob Lehmanowsky, who had served as an officer under Napoleon, and came to Indiana after Waterloo. His descendants survive in Indiana to this day.

1
A rather more probable eponym was the Rev. Harry
Hoosier
, a Negro Methodist evangelist who ravaged the frontier in the 1800 era. Born a slave in North Carolina, he died in Philadelphia in 1810. He was a famous alarmer of sinners and was much esteemed by his white contemporaries, Francis Asbury (1745–1816), Thomas Coke (1747–1814) and Richard Whatcoat (1736–1806). Says A. B. Hyde, in The Story of Methodism, 1894, p. 409: “If these eminent men were sick the congregations were glad if only Harry were there, and Asbury owned that they preferred Harry to him.” I am indebted here to Mr. J. A. Rogers.

2
Letters From the United States, Cuba, and Canada; London, 1856, p. 324.

1
This is from his 1907 paper, p. 25. Why he regarded
-ier
as a characteristically Anglo-Saxon ending he did not pause to explain. It is actually rare in English, and appears mainly in words showing French influence,
e.g., brigadier, cashier, financier, cavalier, grenadier, brazier, soldier
and
farrier
.

2
Hoosier
Inquiry Started by Queen, Bridgeport (Conn.)
Post
, July 30, 1944.

1
Not, of course, to be confused with the Hon. John W. Davis of Wall Street, W. Va., Democratic candidate for the presidency in 1924.

2
Ray had been Governor of Indiana from 1825 to 1831.

3
By May 10, 1834 the Indianapolis
Journal
was reporting that the
Hoosier
(it spelled the word
Hooshier
, though Ray and Tannehill had used
Hoosier
) had “sunk into repose.” Greencastle is now the seat of De Pauw University, founded in 1837. There is a weekly called the
Hoosier Democrat
at Flora, another called the
Hoosier State
at Newport, a
Hoosier Business Woman
at Monticello, and a
Hoosier Banker, Farmer, Legionnaire, Motorist
and
Sentinel
at Indianapolis.

4
London, 1835.

5
Vol. I, p. 223.

6
Dunn, 1907, p. 4.

1
Iowa: a Guide to the Hawkeye State; New York, 1938.

2
Her maiden name was Eleanor T. Dunlap and she was born at Portsmouth, N. H., in the early years of the century. She suffered the pangs of conversion in her youth, and was preparing to go to Palestine to save the Jews when she met Edwards. He was born in Boston on Jan. 23, 1802, and for some years worked there as a printer. In 1826 he and Eleanor met and loved, and she quickly fanned his sense of sin. They were married on Sept. 14 of the same year, and in 1829 went to Jacksonville, Ill., then a sink of frontier carnality, as missionaries. They failed in this capacity, but when, in 1830, Edwards set up a pious paper called the
Western Observer
he seems to have spread a passion for printer’s ink among the boys of the vicinity, for during the years since then they and their sons and grandsons have made many notable successes as editors and publishers. In December, 1831, giving up the salvation of the Jacksonvillains as hopeless, he changed the name of the
Western Observer
to the
Illinois Patriot
, and on March 24, 1838 he moved it to Fort Madison, Ill. It died soon, and on September 1 of that year he set out for Burlington, then a booming frontier trading-post. There he set up the Burlington
Patriot
, which gave way on June 6, 1839 to the
Iowa Patriot
, the progenitor of the
Hawkeye and Patriot
of today. As I have noted,
Hawkeye
was added to the title in 1839. The paper suffered various changes of name afterward, and in 1843 was suspended for a few weeks, but
Hawkeye
survived in its title. I am indebted here to two papers in the
Palimpsest
(Iowa City) for March, 1938, one by Philip D. Jordan and the other by John Ely Briggs.