money digger
George Thompson
george.thompson at NYU.EDU
Wed Jul 13 15:14:41 UTC 2011
*
The recently revised M section of the OED has the following for "money
digger":
**
money-digger n. U.S. a treasure hunter, esp. one who believes buried
treasure can be located by divination or other mystical means.
1820 B. Silliman Remarks Tour Hartford &
Quebec<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:31797/view/Entry/121171?rskey=IHIVgY&result=1&isAdvanced=true>
121
Even to this hour‥new pits are excavated by the insatiable money diggers.
1870 J. De Mille Boys of Grand Pré
School<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:31797/view/Entry/121171?rskey=IHIVgY&result=1&isAdvanced=true>
x.
148 We haven't any mineral rod, nor any magic ceremonies. We're merely a
plain, hard-working crowd; not of money-diggers, but of archæologists.
1998 New Republic<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:31797/view/Entry/121171?rskey=IHIVgY&result=1&isAdvanced=true>
(Electronic
ed.) 23 Feb., Smith and many of his contemporaries became avid
money-diggers.
Here are more:
ON Monday Night the 20th Instant, made his Escape, or was taken off
from one of the Islands called the Two Brothers, near Hell Gate, a Negro Man
named JACOB, belonging to Henry Brasier, and formerly known in this City, by
the Name of the Fu-Fu Negro, or Money-Digger. He is between 40 and 50 Years
of Age. . . . He speaks both English and Dutch, and was born and brought up
in the Jersies. . . . ***
N-Y Gazette, February 27, 1769, p. 3, col. 3
[a long account of an attempt to dig up Cap't. Kid's treasure, in a
cellar, Gold near Beekman:] a bible lying open, with something like a sword
across it, and some long bright iron rods with other apparatus of wizards
and moneydiggers. . .
Commercial Advertiser (N. Y.), April 23, 1822, p. 2, cols. 2‑3
**
The Money Digger at Fault. [in Tuckyhoe; "a forlorn looking personage"
who has learned from a dream that gold was buried on a gentleman's property;
he uses a forked hazel twig, "well known and much believed in . . . among
the old negroes in Kentucky"; finds nothing]
Evening Star (N. Y.), May 2, 1837, p. 2, col. 4. (It does not seem
that this forlorn
personage was black, though.)
**
*
--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ.
Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.
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