[Ads-l] Dixie Land: a Provisional, Incomplete, Annotated Chronology

[Stephen Goranson]

Dixie Land: a Provisional, Incomplete, Annotated Chronology

[Details are in American Dialect Society –list archive, J. Lighter’s Historical Dic. American Slang, and J. Green’s Dic. Of Slang; additions and corrections welcome.]

[Variant Dix+-spellings, some informalisms and/or (black or white) slang or maybe kid-speech (Dickie) for Dixon, he of the exceedingly well-known Line, and eventually, land. Searches for a kind-hearted NY D. slaveholder or a particular D. minstrel role or individual--other than Dixon--may have been over-rated. Old-timers who recalled such related pre-1859 games, perhaps similar to Tag and, maybe, to Red Rover, vindicated.]

1763-7 the Mason and Dixon Line survey

1835 US South [apparently imo called] Mason and Dixon’s *Land*

1844 a (fiction?) dance, with playing “Dixey’s Land”; also 1844, same author, play at Dixie’s land on newly-washed pavement

1849 Mason & Dixon Line re-surveyed and largely confirmed

1852 kids in NY play games “I Spy,” and “Tag,” and “Dicky’s land”

[1854 Dorothea Dix’s Land Bill, not enacted—in 1861 belittled in NY publication]

1855 …this game…the game cannot be played without the State…those who go to Dixey’s land must be Dixey’s men

1856 boys on skates [in Buffalo] played “Dickie’s Land” and “Tag”

1859 D.D. Emmett [who spent time in NY] songs Jonny Roach and Dixie’s Land make Dixie (land) famous [On Emmett see Hans Nathan, Dan Emmett and the rise of Negro minstrelsy, second edition, 1977]

1861 H.  Hotze writes Dixie is an abbreviation for Mason and Dixon’s Line and claims he previously heard northern negroes use it as such

1861 John Bell of TN, from Dixie’s Land

1861 WH Russell [160 or 60?—river vs crow-fly?)] miles north of Memphis reports Dixie’s Land is a synonym for heaven

1861 Old Game of Dixie’s Land, sport, in NY, decades past, with lines, boundaries North and South

1861 Mason and Dixon line, or on Dixon’s, or Dixey’s Line itself [PA newspaper]

1863 Artemis Ward crosses Dixie’s line [several newspapers]

1869 “sout’ in Tixey” [see Green]

1872 Dixie’s land, a recalled game NY boys played, also “Tag”

1872 Emmett, whose story changed later, claimed northern negroes said “I wish I was in Dixie’s land” when he was about to travel south


Stephen Goranson


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