Tom Turkey (1861)

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   THE LAST SAMURAI.
   No, surely "tom turkey" dates before that!  I'll get a letter from Tom
Cruise's lawyers.  I just kid, man!
   OED has 1762 for "tom puss," 1859 for "tom-dog," and Harriet Beecher Stowe
1871 for "tom turkey."  That last is in the ATLANTIC MONTHLY, December 1970,
on the Making of America-Cornell database.
   I have not seen the next volume of DARE, the next volume of the HDAS, or
any "turkey" author to see what's there.  I haven't checked APS Online or
Literature Online yet.  There are 11,200 "tom turkey" Google hits.


(MAKING OF AMERICA)
Author: Henry, George W
Title: Tell tale rag, and popular sins of the day ...
Publication date: 1861.
Collection: Making of America Books
Search results: 2 matches in full text
Page 110:  "It so happened," said he, "as my master came strutting along the
sidewalk like a tom-turkey in the barnyard, that one of his neighbors saluted
him thus:..."
Page 182:   Nicodemus was a gentleman of great wisdom and mightiness in his
own conceit, and was familiar with the processes of a natural birth; but he was
as ignorant of the spiritual birth as this old Tom Turkey was, of the manner
in which he was to lead his congregation out of this foul snare in which they
had been taken.


(WRIGHT AMERICAN FICTION)
  Print Source: Josh Billings  (A writer of "dialect" stories--ed.)
Billings, Josh,
New York : Carleton, 1866.
Pg. 150:  I kant conseive a more despikable opjek than a proud and arrogant
man; he makes me think ov an old Tom Turkey tricing tew git mad at a red
flannel pettycoat on a clothes line.


(WWW.NEWSPAPERARCHIVE.COM)
(CAUTION!  The 1848 Dixon Evening Telegraph is really from 1948!  You just
have to learn these things!--ed.)
Dixon Evening Telegraph - 1/15/1848
...1.49 Fountain Special Saturday ROAST YOUNG TOM TURKEY CELERY DRESSTNG
WHIPPED POTATOES..
Dixon, Illinois Saturday, January 15, 1848  715 k

Indiana Progress - 12/21/1871
...too, he is. Sure enough, there was the old TOM TURKEY a strut-tin' and a
sidlin' and a.....she should laugh 'I never heard that a TOM TURKEY would set
on eggs. Why, they ought.....long, thin, flat stone, and laid it on old TOM's
buck. 'Old TOM. he wilted down.....pleasure can compensate for. How be Set the
TURKEY. Mrs. Stowe.in one of her stories..
Indiana, Pennsylvania Thursday, December 21, 1871  917 k