[Ads-l] Antedating of "Peckerwood" (Derogatory Term for White Person)

[Bill Mullins]

>   1901 Plaindealer (Topeka) 8 Mar. 2 (GenealogyBank)
>
>   The peckerwood, resubmission candidate and cigarette fiend on the so-called Law and Order Ticket, which
>   ought to be called the Lying, Disorder and Hypocrisy Ticket, seems to think that Chiles and Townsend ought
>   to leave town until he is elected. ... The colored people will not support men who denounce their race at every opportunity.

Fred - do you not see "peckerwood" as an adjective modifying "candidate", rather than a noun?

1899 Galveston Daily News 1 Sept 8/3 [Texas Digital Newspaper Program]

Henry Frost was there also, and said: "Yandall, give me your gun, I want to kill the old peckerwood," meaning Mr. Blakely.

The above cite should perhaps be bracketed, as the context makes clear that Blakely was a member of one of two political factions in town - "woodpecker party" and the "jaybird" party.  So it is possible that "peckerwood" simply means "woodpecker" in this context.




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