NYC (1870); Empire City (1832); Empire State (1833)

[George Thompson]

Barry gives us the following passage:
>   April 1833, AMERICAN TURF REGISTER, pg. 418:
>   Will the Old Dominion pocket this?  Where are Mary Randolph,
> Goliah,Flying Dutchman, Zinganee, Trifle? and then the Empire
> state, with her Black
> Maria, O'Kelly, Medoc, Terror, Miss Mattie of New Jersey, and Mr.
> Craig'sstable--...
>

The "Black Maria" referred to is probably the source of the term "black maria" meaning "paddy wagon", though this Black Maria was the daughter of a Black Maria who raced toward the end of the 1810s.  But the appearances of "Black Maria" I posted here a few years ago from the mid-1830s are so far as I know still the earliest yet found.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African
Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.