Correction of "Hoosier" First Use in OED

[Fred Shapiro]

The OED's first use for "hoosier" is dated 1826.  However, an
authoritative web site by one of the Research Editors of the Yale Book of
Quotations (Jeffrey C. Graf) says the following:

***
Many reasonably reliable sources, including the Oxford Endlish Dictionary,
cite 1826 as the earliest written appearance of the word hoosier. They
offer as evidence a letter dated February 24, 1826 that James Curtis of
Holt County, Missouri, sent to his uncle, Thomas Beeler of Indianapolis.
Curtis wrote:

         ... the Indiana hoesiers that came out last fall is settled from 2
to 4 milds of us ...

       A research worker in the Indiana State Library discovered the
letter, and the Library reported the discovery in the April 1949 issue of
the Indiana Bulletin of History. The Chicago Tribune picked up the story
and ran it on June 2, 1949, but improved the spelling and turned
"hoesiers" into "hoosiers."

       The letter is real enough, but for some reason the date is wrong,
1846 rather than 1826. 1826 is not smudged or marred in any way on the
manuscript, but a curator or librarian has indicated in pencil [1846] on
it to correct the writer's error. Holt County, Missouri, was not created
until 1841, named for a man who died in 1840. Census records of 1830 and
1840 place James Curtis in Indiana. The letter itself refers to the
marriage of C. J. Beeler and Margaret Vondy (born on the Isle of Man) on
Thursday, February 5th. February 5, 1846 was a Thursday, and the Holt
County Historical Society has published a list of Marriages Recorded in
the Holt County Missouri Courthouse. One entry reads: G. I. Beeler.
Margaret Vandy. 5 March 1846.
***

According to the Graf web site, this leaves the following as the earliest
known citations:

***
A passage in Sanford C. Cox's Recollections of the Early Settlement of the
Wabash Valley includes an entry from the diary of a schoomaster in Black
Creek, Fountain County:

         Under date of July 14, 1827, the diarist relates a current
anecdote about a squatter who gave a false alarm that Indians were coming,
in order that he might ride to Crawfordsville and enter a claim for his
land ahead of some specultors he had seen looking it over. Successful in
his deceit, he boasted: "There is a Yankee trick for you -- done up by a
Hoosier."

The volume, though, published in 1860, is hardly contemporaneous, not the
best source for a definitive early use of the word.

       Several sources, including the State Library, cite a letter (in the
Indiana State Library Manuscript Section) that G. L. Murdock wrote on Feb.
11, 1831 to Gen. John Tipton in which he says, "Our Boat will [be] named
the Indiana Hoosier." Dunn had always hoped that earlier references to the
word would turn up, but the Murdock letter seems to be the first
verifiable instance of its use. In spite of much searching, no one,
apparently, has found previous written evidence of the term.
***

Fred R. Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
   Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press
Yale Law School                             ISBN 0300107986
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
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