OED's "rum" -- perhaps 1651?; and its misattributions to "Franklin's" Drinkers Dictionary

[Joel S. Berson]

In the latest OED newsletter I find --

A)  an article on rum, saying:

"The word <http://oed.com/view/Entry/168746>rum is first recorded in
1654 in the Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, where it is
mentioned along with another of its names
<http://oed.com/view/Entry/103374>kill-devil:
        Berbados Liquors, commonly called Rum, Kill Deuill, or the like"

Has anyone looked into the early records of Massachusetts or
Boston?  Much the more active port at the time, I'm sure, than
Saybrook.  (The Colony of Connecticut did not merge with New Haven until 1665.)


B)  under Latest update / Figures of speech:

"The vocabulary of drunkenness is immense, and has been since at
least the time of the famous Drinker's Dictionary (1737) in Benjamin
Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette. To that vast lexicon we now add ..."

But every word or expression in Franklin's dictionary was published 6
months earlier, in the New England Weekly Journal of July 6,
1736.  See "The Source for Benjamin Franklin's 'The Drinkers
Dictionary' ...", _American Speech_, Vol. 81, No. 2 (Summer 2006), by
... moi.  The OED's quotations from "Franklin's" Drinkers Dictionary
are under dagged, king['s English] (both interdatings), and fence and
Virginia (earliest quote for "Virginia fence").

Joel

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