Antedating of "Graham Cracker"

[Ben Zimmer]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 10:16 PM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> Graham cracker (OED 1882)
>
> 1835 _Hampshire Gazette_ 15 July 3 (America's Historical Newspapers)  Variety
> Store. ... Sweet and Graham CRACKERS.

Here's a letter dated Jan. 12, 1833 referring to "Graham bread and crackers":

http://collections.nlm.nih.gov/bookviewer?PID=nlm:nlmuid-64720440R-bk (p. 71)
"I hastened to their assistance, taking care to carry with me a good
quantity of Graham bread and crackers, upon which I subsisted while
there."

(In: Sylvester Graham, _A lecture on epidemic diseases generally: and
particularly the spasmodic cholera_, 1833.)

--bgz

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

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