"lobster back", puzzling meaning

[Joel S. Berson]

I forgot to mention an interesting quotation revealed by Google
Books, with a possibly different sense:

1847, in Historical Collections of Ohio: Containing a Collection of
the Most ... by Henry Howe - Ohio - 1847 - 581 pages, Page 254 "If
any traveller, in passing through Ohio, should chance to see a large
number of " lobster back" people on the farms, or about the village
taverns, ...".

Joel

At 8/22/2008 10:11 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>My tertiary source failed me: his quotation from a secondary source
>turns out to be the secondary source's own words from 1964.  So I do
>not have a pre-Revolutionary (would have been c1745) "lobster back".
>
>But since the OED does not have any lobster-backs, I'll point to the
>following, which discusses the very question:  when did
>"lobster-back" appear?  It finds the earliest in 1812, via America's
>Historical Newspapers:
>
>http://boston1775.blogspot.com/2007/11/british-soldiers-werent-called.html
>(dated Nov. 5, 2007)

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