[Ads-l] "Wild and woolly" (1873)

[dave@wilton.net]

The OED has 1884.
 
“Wild and Woolly and Hard to Curry.” Dallas Daily Herald (Texas), 10 August 1873, 4/3. Portal To Texas History: Texas Digital Newspaper Program. [ https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth279849/m1/4/ ]( https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth279849/m1/4/ ) 

Describing a fight in Brooklyn, Texas between two drunks on 7 August 1873
 
"Griffin was led down the street some one hundred yards to the drug store. Valentine refused to be pacified when they met and clinched, and Va[l]entine drew another Derringer, but it dropped in the scuffle. Griffin got him down, when he was pulled off. When Valentine regained his feet he threw a short piece of plank at Griffin which he dodged, and yelled in return, 'Wild and woolly and hard to curry.' This was fuel to the flame."
 
And there is this from the same paper a few years later:
 
Comanche Jim. “Frontier Racket” (18 January 1877). Dallas Daily Herald (Texas), 24 January 1877, 4/3. Portal To Texas History: Texas Digital Newspaper Program. [ https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth280913/m1/4/ ]( https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth280913/m1/4/ ) 

"Now that the law is touched in the person of Mr. Jeffries, the wild and woolly cow-boys no doubt wjll [sic] be compelled to lay aside their weapons on entering the township in order that the more peaceable and respectable members of the community may have a show for their lives. The excuse that Fort Griffin is a frontier town and that Indians are dangerous is now getting 'too thin' to justify men necessarily carrying weapons, which, as a matter of consequence, they use, when frontier whisky makes them feel like it."
 

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