[Ads-l] 1770 "tarring and feathering" ((vbl. n.) and "tar and feather" (v.), and the OED

[Joel Berson]

They gave him warning [to] Quit the Town within 3 days, or he must take the consequences (wch means Tarring and Feathering) a most cruel violence ...  The poor man not complyg they [seized] him at noon day, put him into a Cart, exhibited him thro the Town, & were going to Tar and F: him ...


[I have not expanded abbreviations that are above the line in the source.]

1770 July 25.  Letter from Anne Hulton.  In _Letters of a Loyalist Lady_ (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1927), p. 27.


"Tarring and feathering" ((vbl. n.) 1770 antedates OED2 "tarring" n., 1774--.

"Tar and f[eather" (v.) interdates 1769 (earliest in OED2) -- 1774.

Joel

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