[Ads-l] "x-gallon hat" antedated

[Peter Reitan]

“two-gallon” hat 1882.
[Begin excerpt]Hey Charley; don’t talk so loud.  When we have our two-gallon hat on the girls can’t tell us from the ‘hairy man of the jungles.’[End Excerpt]
The Homer Index (Homer, Michigan), April 12, 1882, page 3.

This example does not specify the type of hat, but based on the context of many early examples, and as specifically explained in some later examples, the types of hats generally referred to as “two gallon” hats (or sometimes larger volume) from the 1880s through about 1920 were stovepipe hats or top hats.

The earliest example of “ten-gallon” hat I found, from 1908, was also a top hat style hat.

[Begin Excerpt]This morning, just about the time Enquirer readers pick up the paper and give it hasty perusal before negotiating their ham and eggs and hot rolls, a special train that worked overtime in eating up the distance between this city and the town of the Big Wind on Michigan’s shores will be shedding oodles of white ten-gallon hats in the Union Depot of the latter city.[End Excerpt]
Cincinnati Enquirer, June 15, 1908, page 7.

A photo of those particular hats in a separate article about the same event verified that they were top hats, not cowboy hats.

The earliest “x-gallon” cowboy hat reference I found is from Kansas City in 1917, a “6-gallon” hat.  The earliest “ten-gallon” cowboy hat I found is from El Paso in 1918.  Many ten-gallon hat references, but the predominant early x-gallon cowboy hat examples are “four-gallon” hats, also many early “two-gallon” cowboy hats, continuing the older format with a new hat style.

“Ten-gallon” hat became more-or-less standard beginning in 1927, during a spate of reporting on President Calvin Coolidge looking awkward in his “ten gallon” hat during a trip to South Dakota.

I traced the origin of two widely circulated theories that “ten-gallon” was derived from Spanish.  I posted here recently asking for help finding the original of one of those references, which first surfaced in 1939.
https://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2023-April/163330.html

The theory is that “gallon” is a corruption of “galon,” a decorative ribbon or braid.

A second theory, first floated in 1985, believes it is a corruption of the expression, “tan galan,” which means very handsome, or something like that.

I’ve posted a more thorough (too thorough) discussion on my blog.
https://esnpc.blogspot.com/2023/04/two-gallon-top-hats-and-ten-gallon.html




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