"moon-curser" 1807, antedates 1812; "mooncusser", not in OED3

[Joel S. Berson]

(I leave it to the OED to decide whether these should be one entry, or two.)

A.  "moon-curser"

1)  1807, antedates OED3 (Dec. 2002) sense 2., 1812--

 From the New York Commercial Advertiser.
Letter II. / To the Citizens of the United States.
...
Thus the moon curser is pleased with a storm,
because when a ship is wrecked he may chance to get some of the drift.

Poulson's American Daily Advertiser
[Philadelphia]; Date: 10-21-1807; Volume: XXXVI;
Issue: 9634; Page: [2]; col. 3. EAN.

2)  1814, a brief definition

Sailors' Rights. / From the Boston Spectator.
... these fellows are like moon-cursers, they
hold out a light to destroy the ship.

Weekly Messenger [Boston]; Date: 05-06-1814;
Volume: 3; Issue: 29; Page: [1]; col. 3. EAN.

3)  1815, another brief definition

A New-York paper says, that the Moon Cursers
along the Jersey shore, have lately hung out
false lights, to decoy vessels on shore, for the
purposes of plunder. This is a heavy charge, and
we hope, for the honor of humanity, will prove ill-founded.

Boston Gazette; Date: 11-13-1815; Volume: 43;
Issue: 42; Page: [2]; col. 1. EAN.


B.  "mooncusser"

"Mooncusser" is not in OED3  Wicktionary asserts
the etymology is "based on the fact that the
strategy would not work on a moonlit night, such
that the would-be pirate cussed the moon"  (see also (2) below).

The earliest I find via GBooks is 1937, when it
appears in 4 [!] separate sources. (Existence and
dates of all four confirmed via Harvard
catalog.)  I would think the word arose much
earlier (OED dates "cuss" as "an execration" to
1848, U.S.)  I don't find "mooncusser" in EAN or 19th Century U.S. Newspapers.

1)  "Mooncussers of Cape Cod", by Henry Crocker
Kittredge (Boston, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin, 1937).  Snippet.

Beachcombers, wreckers, and mooncussers, sworn
brethren of the beach; and because the mooncusser
never existed on the sandy ... Our bards have
made the most of the mooncusser, fictitious
though he is, and have sung of his deeds ...

[But perhaps he was as real as "moonrakers" and "wreckers".]

2)  "Massachusetts: A Guide to its Places and
People", by Federal Writers' Project, 1937.  Preview.

"This district [in Marblehead] is Barnegat, long
ago named for the town on the New Jersey coast
where 'mooncussers' lured vessels to destruction
by false lights from shore, with the purpose of
plundering their cargoes.  (A mooncusser is one
who curses the moon for its hindrance to his nefarious designs.)".

3)  Cape Cod pilot: Federal writers' project,
Works progress administration for the state of
Massachusetts, by Josef Berger, Federal Writers'
Project of the Works Progress Administration of
Massachusetts (Modern Pilgrim Press, 1937).  Snippet.

"That is to say there never was a case of moon-
cussing because no mooncusser ever was caught.
"Mooncussing" has come to mean beach-combing of
any kind. And some of the historians excuse even
this. One writer, for example, attributes the ..."

4)  Ports of the sun: a guide to the Caribbean,
Bermuda, Nassau, Havana, and Panama, by Eleanor
Early (Houghton Mifflin company, 1937).  Snippet.

"But if you should go in broad daylight you will
feel nothing at all, I am afraid. There is a
haunted castle on the island ­ Sam Lord's Castle,
on the Crane Coast. Sam Lord was a moon- cusser ­
a mooncusser was a man who put a lantern in ..."

Joel

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