Florida cracker refers to
colonial-era
English and
American pioneer settlers and their descendants in what is now the U.S. state of
Florida. The first of these arrived in 1763 after
Spain traded Florida to Great Britain following the latter's victory over France in the
Seven Years' War.
[1]
The term "cracker" was in use during the
Elizabethan era 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 Gaelicized spelling "
craic" are still in use in
Northern England,
Ireland and
Scotland. It is documented in
William Shakespeare's
King John (1595): "What cracker is this ... that deafes our ears / With this abundance of superfluous breath?"
By the 1760s, the ruling classes, both in Britain and in the
American colonies, applied the term "cracker" to
Scots-Irish and
English American settlers of the remote southern back country, as noted in 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."
[2] The word was later associated with the cowboys of Georgia and Florida, many of them descendants of those early frontiersmen who had migrated South. Also used by Florida cowboys, as with picture of Florida cracker Bone Mizell.
Among some Floridians, the term is used as a proud or
jocular self-description. Since the huge influx of new residents into Florida in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, from the northern parts of the
United States and from
Mexico and
Latin America, the term "Florida Cracker" is used informally by some Floridians to indicate that their families have lived in the state for many generations. It is considered 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."
[5][6]
this thread