Everything about Florida Cracker totally explained
Florida Cracker refers to the original
American pioneer settlers of the State of
Florida in the
19th century.
Historical usage
The term "cracker" was in use during
Elizabethan times to describe braggarts. The original root of this is the
Middle English word
crack 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've got from being great
boasters; they're 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.
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's a source of pride to be descended from "frontier people who didn't just live but flourished in a time before air conditioning, mosquito repellent, and screens."
Notable Florida Crackers
Quáqueros
Spaniards in Florida called them “Quáqueros,” a corruption of the English word “Quaker,” which the Spanish used to contemptuously refer to any Protestant.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Florida Cracker'.
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