Query

[Fred Shapiro]

On Thu, 16 Dec 1999, Fred Shapiro wrote:

> Let me be the asker for a change.  Can anyone produce evidence for the
> term _founding father_ earlier than the OED's 1914 first use?

It turns out that the 1914 citation in the OED is erroneous (the actual
date of the source cited is 1941).  So my real question is, can anyone
produce evidence for the term _founding father_ earlier than 1918 (there
is a reference to a 1918 usage by Warren Harding in Safire's New Political
Dictionary)?


Fred R. Shapiro                             Coeditor (with Jane Garry)
Associate Librarian for Public Services     TRIAL AND ERROR: AN OXFORD
  and Lecturer in Legal Research            ANTHOLOGY OF LEGAL STORIES
Yale Law School                             Oxford University Press, 1998
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               ISBN 0-19-509547-2