American Language Supplement 2 (125 page)

Connecticut, as everyone knows, is commonly called the
Wooden Nutmeg State
or
Nutmeg State
in facetious remembrance of the fact that in the early days the pedlars it sent into the back country were sharp traders and devised a thousand ways to rook the settlers, most of whom were of low mental visibility. One of these schemes, according to legend, was to sell them nutmegs made of wood. It has been suggested by various historians of the language that Judge Thomas C. Haliburton, author of “Sam Slick,” was the originator of this fable,
¹
but the evidence seems to be against them, for Haliburton did not begin to publish his Yankee sketches until 1835, and the DAE finds a reference to wooden nutmegs so early as 1824.
²
At the start
Land of Wooden Nutmegs
seems to have been
applied to the whole of New England, but it soon became confined to Connecticut, which took an early lead in manufacturing. At other times the State has been called the
Constitution State
, the
Blue Law State
, the
Brownstone State
, the
Freestone State
, and the
Land of Steady Habits. Constitution State
refers to the fact that the Fundamental Orders drawn up by Thomas Hooker at Hartford in 1639
¹
were the first formal constitution written on American soil.
Blue Law State
, which is traced by the DAE to 1839 but is no doubt older, refers to the Blue Laws alleged to have been in force in Connecticut in colonial days. Whether or not they were ever actually passed and executed has been much debated by historians. They were first made known to the world in a before-mentioned “General History of Connecticut” published in London in 1781 by Samuel A. Peters, a Tory clergyman who had been forced to leave the colony on the outbreak of the Revolution.
²
His bias was only too manifest, and for more than a century the existence of the laws he quoted was doubted by the learned, though it was believed in by Americans in general. But of late there has been a tendency to admit that he did not imagine them altogether, though he unquestionably embellished them. The DAE’s earliest example of
blue law
is from Peters’s history. The term quickly came into common use.
Brownstone State
, which is not listed by the DAE and is long obsolete, referred, according to Shankle, to the brown-stone quarries at Portland on the Connecticut river, which flourished mightily in the Brownstone Era of the 60s and 70s.
Freestone State
, also obsolete, referred to similar quarries. It is listed as the only nickname of Connecticut in an article headed “Names and Nick-names of the Several States” published in
Brother Jonathan
on August 12, 1843,
³
and is there credited to an Albany newspaper. It is also given, along with
Nutmeg State
and
Blue Law State
, by
Schele de Vere.
¹
The DAE does not trace it beyond Schele.
Land of Steady Habits
appeared in John Neal’s “Brother Jonathan” in 1825,
²
and seems to have been in intermittent use for a long while afterward, but it is now heard only seldom. Schele de Vere, in his manuscript notes to his “Americanisms: The English of the New World,”
³
applied it to the whole of New England.

Rhode Island, the smallest of the States in area, is now usually called
Little Rhody
, but the DAE’s earliest example is dated no further back than 1851. In the
Brother Jonathan
list, just quoted, the nickname given to it is the
Plantation State
, an obvious reference to its official name – the
State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
– though there are few plantations within its bounds today. It has also been called the
Lively Experiment
, in commemoration of a phrase in its original charter of 1663: “… to hold forth a
lively experiment
, that a most flourishing civil state may stand and best be maintained … with a full liberty in religious concernment.”
⁴
A list of State nicknames that used to be published annually in the
World
Almanac gave New Jersey four of them, to wit,
Mosquito State, Garden State, Jersey Blue State
and
New Spain
, but in the course of time
New Spain
was omitted, and then
Jersey Blue State
, and the
Mosquito State
, and now
Garden State
is the only one that remains. It seems to be relatively recent, for Schele de Vere, in 1872, said that Kansas was then the
Garden State
, and J. H. Beadle, in “Western Wilds and the Men Who Redeem Them,” 1833,
⁵
gave the name to Minnesota.
Jersey Blues State
(with
Blues
plural) appears in the
Brother Jonathan
list of 1843. It was derived from the nickname of the Jersey militia in colonial times: the men wore blue uniforms. The DAE traces it in this sense to 1758. It was transferred to the patriot troops during the Revolution, but by 1850 had degenerated to the lowly estate of a name for a breed of fowl.

In the 80s and 90s New Jersey was known almost universally as the
Mosquito State
, mainly because of the swarms of the insects
that beset New York City from the Jersey marshes, but after the Spanish-American War they began to abate, and on March 24, 1930 the State librarian, Charles R. Bacon, was writing to Shankle that “a considerable number of other States have fully as many, if not more.” These Jersey mosquitoes were frequent themes of the comic artists of the years before 1900, and were represented as having snouts resembling bulldozers or flame-throwers. Shankle says that
New Spain
arose in 1817, when Joseph Bonaparte, ex-King of Spain, settled in Bordentown, remaining there until 1832 and returning for two years more in 1837. Bordentown’s possession of the splendors of his court aroused the envy of socially ambitious Philadelphians, and they gave vent to it by dubbing New Jersey
New Spain
, the
State of Spain
and the
Foreigner State
. All these nicknames, of course, are now forgotten. Shankle also lists
Camden and Amboy State
(or
State of Camden and Amboy
),
Clam State
and
Switzerland of America
. The first harks back to the time when the promoters of the Camden and Amboy Railroad ran the politics of the State, and is now obsolete.
Clam State
refers to the clam fisheries of the Delaware Bay and the Atlantic sea-coast, and is still occasionally heard. As I have noted in connection with New Hampshire,
Switzerland of America
is shared with four other States. It must seem grotesque to travelers across the melancholy flats which lead to the Jersey coast resorts, but it is justified by some fine scenery along the western border.

Maryland has had half a dozen or more nicknames since colonial times, but only
Old Line State
and
Terrapin State
have any remaining vitality today. Both are under formidable competition from
Maryland Free State
, which was invented in 1923 by Hamilton Owens, then editor of the Baltimore
Evening Sun
. The story is thus told in “The
Sunpapers
of Baltimore”:
¹

It was first used in the
Evening Sun
on April 4, 1923, in the headline over a brief extract from a “Geographical Compilation for the Use of Schools,” published in Baltimore in 1806. The late Albert C. Ritchie, then Governor of Maryland, adopted it with delight, and it spread over the country during his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1924. It appealed greatly to Marylanders, for it was a convenient crystallization of a body of ideas that had been traditional in their State since colonial days, and had been revived and revivified by the
Evening Sun
after its establishment in 1910. These ideas were all favorable to personal liberty, and had been exemplified in a radical and even somewhat scandalous manner in Articles 6 and 44 of the State Declaration of Rights, adopted September 18, 1867, as follows:

Once he had launched the
Maryland Free State
Mr. Owens used it assiduously and it was taken up by other editors throughout the nation, and soon spread the idea that Maryland was a sanctuary from the oppressive legislation and official usurpation that beset the country in general and most of the other States in particular. This idea was given powerful reinforcement in 1938, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt came into the State in an effort to purge the United States Senate of one of the Maryland Senators, Millard E. Tydings, then an active opponent of the New Deal. In a speech made at Denton, Md., on September 5 Roosevelt sought to disarm the Marylanders by describing “the
Free State of Maryland
” as “proud of itself and conscious of itself,” but then proceeded to argue for submission to “the flag, the Constitution and the President.” The result was that Tydings was reëlected by an overwhelming majority.

Maryland Free State
, of course, was suggested by
Irish Free State
(
Saorstat Eireann
),
¹
which was apparently suggested in turn by
Orange Free State
.
²
Some of the staff contributors to the
Evening Sun
occasionally referred to the
Free State
as the
Saorstat Maryland
, but this form did not prosper, and
Maryland Free State
is now used exclusively.
³
It has overshadowed all the old nicknames of the State, including
Old Line State
and
Terrapin State
. The former is generally assumed to recall the Maryland Line in the Continental Army, described by a historian as “among the finest bodies of troops in the Army,” but the DAE says that it really refers to the Mason and Dixon Line.
⁴
The DAE’s earliest example is dated 1871, but the designation is much older.
Terrapin State
is a melancholy memorial to the State’s former glory,
Malacolemmys palustris
, now on tap in only a few of the more backward-looking clubs of Baltimore and a fast diminishing array of private houses. Shankle says that Maryland was once also called the
Cockade State
, and quotes King’s “Handbook of the United States” to the effect that the Maryland Line was made up largely of “patrician young men” who wore “brilliant cockades.” The DAE does not list the nickname, and the explanation of it seems somewhat incredible, for the Maryland Line was by no means predominantly aristocratic and cockades were worn by many other Continental troops. Other names that have been applied to Maryland are
Monumental State, Queen State
and
Oyster State
. The first was an extension of
Monumental City
, still often used of Baltimore; it was listed by
Brother Jonathan
in 1843. The second I have never heard in Maryland, though I was born there the better part of a century ago. The
third, like
Terrapin State
, recalls a faded and now half forgotten pride, for the Chesapeake oyster has been deteriorating steadily for fifty years, and is now seldom encountered in its former state of perfection.

Delaware, which lies cheek by jowl with Maryland, is usually called the
Blue Hen State
. Shankle quotes the following account of the origin of the name from W. A. Powell’s “History of Delaware”:
¹

A related but rather more plausible etymology was printed in the
Niles’ Register
in 1840, as follows:

How much truth is in this story I do not know, but in one form or another it is believed and cherished in Delaware. The DAE traces
blue hen’s chicken
for “a fiery, quick-tempered person” to 1830, and
Blue Hen State
to 1840, but the latter was not listed by
Brother Jonathan
in 1843. Delaware has also been called the
Diamond State
,
²
New Sweden
and
Uncle Sam’s Pocket Handkerchief
. The DAE says that the first was probably suggested by the small size of the State, as the third unquestionably was.
Diamond State
is traced to 1869 by the DAE, but
Uncle Sam’s Pocket Handkerchief
is not listed, and Shankle says he has been unable to discover anything about its history.
New Sweden
is simply a translation of
Nye Sverige
, the name of the original settlement of Swedes on Christiana creek, founded in 1638.
Brother Jonathan
listed
Little Delaware
in 1843, but this was hardly a nickname.