"Uncle Sam" in 1810

[Ben Zimmer]

Barry Popik, who previously had discovered an example of "Uncle Sam"
from Dec. 1812, alerted some of us to a new antedating, appearing in a
journal entry dated Mar. 24, 1810, written by Isaac Mayo, then a Navy
midshipman. The relevant passage is transcribed, with a partial page
image, on Log Lines, the blog of the USS Constitution Museum:

http://www.usscm.blogspot.com/2013/06/seeking-uncle-sam.html

Here is a description of the journal, which is evidently not available online:

http://www.ussconstitutionmuseum.org/proddir/prod/496/42

And here is my writeup on the antedating for my Word Routes column:

http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/new-light-on-uncle-sam/

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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