Crackers

[Subdeacon Joe]

From The Facebook Group Old West Legends, Myths, and More

 

"How did white Southerners aquire the sobriquet cracker?

Contrary to what many believe it’s origin had nothing to do with saltines, cracked corn or or popping whips.

.The first known written usage of the term ‘cracker’ (to mean a person) comes from Shakespeare's King John: "What cracker is this same that deafs our ears with this abundance of superfluous breath?" The term comes from the middle English word "Craic" which meant a loud boastful comment. (Hence our modern usage as in " crack a joke" or a "wise crack") The term is still used in Ireland, Scotland and Ulster to mean friendly conversation.

The term " Cracker" thus came to mean a talkative, loud boastful person. It was applied in colonial America to the mostly Scots-Irish of the back country and eventually to we, their descendants (white rural Southerners).

Ben Franklin was talking about my ancestors when he wrote in his memoirs about "a race of runnagates and crackers, equally wild and savage as the Indians, who inhabit the desert[ed] woods and mountains." 

So was a colonial official that wrote to the Earl of Dartmouth in 1766: 

“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 abode”

    
Ian Saberton , the distinguished British historian of the American Revolution wrote of them:

“Scattered among the backcountry population was a body of hardy, illiterate and lawless backwoodsmen whom the British came to fear more than most. They tended to have no settled habitation and lived partly by hunting and partly by preying on their neighbors. “This distinguished race of men,” declared George Hanger (a British officer), “are more savage than the Indians and possess every one of their vices but not one of their virtues. I have known one of these fellows travel two hundred miles through the woods, never keeping any road or path, guided by the sun by day and the stars by night, to kill a particular person belonging to the opposite party. He would shoot him before his own door and ride away to boast of what he had done on his return … I speak … of that heathen race known by the name of crackers.”

This is why  white rural Southerners are called Crackers and  if you have ever stood around a campfire at a Southern hunting camp or re-enactment (especially if there is a mason jar of clear liquid being passed) you know that the term is fitting!

And you thought it had something to do with saltines, cracking whips or corn!"

[Waxahachie Kid #17017 L]

Yep....

I figured it was because we ate so many of those crackers that Billy Graham's fore bearers invented. 

 

Growing up we ate as many as Mom would bring home from the grocery. Slather a bunch of peanut butter and grape jelly, between two of them, and it was a treat. I guess now they eat them mostly as an ingredient in S'mores.

 

Of course we do not identify ourselves as being "southerners"...much as non-natives would like to label us as such. I guess that is why I never remember being called such a thing...and I have been in the State for 72+ years now.