Florida cracker
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Florida Cracker refers to the original American pioneer settlers of the State of Florida in the 19th century.
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[edit] Historical usage
The term "cracker" was in use during Elizabethan times to describe braggarts. The original root of this is the Middle English word crack1 meaning "entertaining conversation" (One may be said to "crack" a joke); this term and the alternate spelling "craic" are still in use in Ireland and Scotland. It is documented in Shakespeare's King John (1595): "What cracker is this ... that deafes our ears / With this abundance of superfluous breath?"
By the 1760s the English, both at home and in the American colonies, applied the term “Cracker” to Scots-Irish settlers of the remote southern back country, as noted in a passage from a letter to the Earl of Dartmouth: "I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who often change their places of abode." The word was later associated with the cowboys of Georgia and Florida, many of them descendants of those early frontiersmen.
[edit] Modern usage
The term is used as a proud or jocular self-description. Since the huge influx of new residents into Florida from the northern parts of the United States, and Latin America, in the late 20th century, "Florida Cracker" is used informally by some Floridians to indicate that their family has lived there for many generations; and/or that they were born and raised in the state of Florida. For such people that have generational Floridian ties, it is a source of pride to be descended from "frontier people who did not just live but flourished in a time before air conditioning, mosquito repellent, and screens."[1]
[edit] Notable Florida Crackers
- Christopher Booth
- Lawton Chiles
- William Cooley
- Ben Hill Griffin Jr. - "A Cracker millionaire from Frostproof, Fla." [2]
- Bone Mizell [3]
- Bill Nelson
- Adam Putnam
- Tim Dorsey
[edit] Quáqueros
Spaniards in Florida called them “Quáqueros,” a corruption of the English word “Quaker,” which the Spanish used to contemptuously refer to any Protestant.[4]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Victor Milt's Documentary Film: Cracker Cowboys [2]
- Example of a Florida Cracker Homestead
- Florida Cracker Trail Association
