batter (or shooes, or the sun) "half a quarter high"

[Joel S. Berson]

I have a letter written around 1842 that contains the following:

"One day in every week was devoted to the making of cake and pastry
and I have been assured that the batter was half a quarter high as
light as a feather and as white as snow."

Googling tells me that Sarah Orne Jewett wrote "and preferred an
Indian pudding to pie crust that was, without exaggeration, half a
quarter high."

A book on Texas court cases has "The sun was about half a quarter
high when the defendant left the witness."

"On either side of the seams at the bottom of the cap one sees the
black and white stripes attached to and at the sides of the black
neck-pieces; and the border round the bottom of the cap, which is
just under half a quarter high,"  From a Swedish (?) journal, 1953.

I also find "The Womens shooes are half a quarter high at the heel,
set on with little nails, in so much that they can hardly go in
them."  This is in "The voyages and travells of the ambassadors sent
by Frederick Duke of Holstein ...", by Adam Olearius (1669).

So this can't be a literal reference to the size of a U.S. quarter.

What does "half a quarter high" mean?  A reference to an eighth of
some unspecified unit?  (But for both the sun and pies/shoes?)  Or
something metaphorical?

Joel

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org