try and?

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

A quick search of the North American Women's Letters and Diaries database shows an example from a 1798 letter from Elizabeth Ann Seton, a New Yorker:
"I must tell you she was going to try and recover her health at New Rochelle. "

There are some earlier (17th cen) British examples in the LION database, though the contexts are sometimes ambiguous as to whether the meaning is "try to X".
-----Original Message-----
From:   Joan Houston Hall [mailto:jdhall at WISCMAIL.WISC.EDU]
Sent:   Thu 4/17/2003 5:20 PM
To:     ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Cc:
Subject:             Re: try and?

DARE's first quote for "try and" is from 1847.

At 03:01 PM 4/17/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Peter Richardson <prichard at LINFIELD.EDU>
>Subject:      try and?
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>There must be something in the archives about "try and" as well: "I'll try
>and get to it in the morning." Does anyone know how old the apparent
>substitution of _and_ for _to_ is in this case? Possibly analogous is
>"I'll look and see" = "I'll [take a] look in order to see." Note that we
>can't say "I'll try and [do it]," but that "I'll try to [do it]" is just
>fine: *I'll try and / I'll try to.
>
>Peter R.