Ohio History Journal

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NOTES 59

NOTES                                                                        59

 

 

family. Martzolff, Shetrone, and Weisenburger in their accounts provide additional bio-

graphical particulars.

13. As early as 1772 the Rev. David Jones of New Jersey described the Circleville

earthworks. Shetrone, "Caleb Atwater," 83.

14. Weisenburger, "Caleb Atwater," 23-31.

15. Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio (Columbus, 1888), II, 416. See also

Weisenburger, "Caleb Atwater," 20.

16. Howe, Historical Collections, II, 417. Howe described Atwater as having been a

"disappointed, unhappy man" when the two met in 1846. They were distant relatives.

17. Weisenburger, "Caleb Atwater," 30.

18. Quoted more fully in Weisenburger, "Caleb Atwater," 34.

19. Also quoted in Weisenburger, "Caleb Atwater," 34.

20. "Caleb Atwater," 267. In February 1839, according to Weisenburger, Atwater

wrote in a letter to a close friend that every copy of the first edition had been sold

within four weeks of the time it was bound, and a second edition had just been issued.

"Caleb Atwater," 34. Atwater, in his preface, said that he planned to publish only

500 copies at a time. A sampling of Ohio libraries indicates that copies of the first

and second editions are available.

21. "Caleb Atwater," 87.

22. "Caleb Atwater," 32, 36.

23. Benedetto Croce, "History To Be Written and Not To Be Written," in History

as the Story of Liberty (New York, 1955), 280.

24. See Allan Nevins and Henry Steele Commager, The Pocket History of the United

States (New York, 1951), 200.

 

HANNAH FANCHER'S NOTES ON OHIO SPEECH IN 1824

 

1. The Castigator (Georgetown, Ohio), April 15, 1828, August 7, 1832, December 4,

1832, May 8, 1833.

2. Ibid., June 19, 1833.

3. The History of Brown County, Ohio (Chicago, 1883), 605; George Wells Bartholo-

mew, Record of the Bartholomew Family (Austin, Tex., 1885), 192-194.

4. Colonel Herman Dieck, The Most Complete and Authentic History of the Life and

Public Services of General U. S. Grant (Philadelphia, 1885), 52.

5. N. P. Seymour in Dialect Notes, I (1890), 17. See also W. H. Parry, "Dialect

Peculiarities in Southeastern Ohio," Dialect Notes, IV (1916), 339-342; Lewis A. Ondis,

"Dialectical Peculiarities of Athens, Ohio," American Speech, XX (1945), 232-223.

6. The Castigator (Ripley, Ohio), November 9, 1824.

7. Sometimes which by itself was used for this purpose. Sir William A. Craigie and

James R. Hulbert, eds., A Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles

(Chicago, 1940); hereafter D.A.E.

8. In Lester V. Berry and Melvin Van Den Bark, The American Thesaurus of

Slang (New York, 1953), dauncy is included in a list of "miscellaneous western terms,"

and defined as "downcast, sad." See also D. A. E. Dauncy is still occasionally heard in

Ohio with the meaning defined by Hannah Fancher.

9. In a swither, an obsolescent phrase for uncertainty, was noted in 1940 at Salem,

Virginia. C. M. Woodard, A Word-list from Virginia and North Carolina (American

Dialect Society, Publications, No. 6, 1946), 29. The Oxford English Dictionary gives

examples from the novels of Robert Louis Stevenson.

10. This is essentially a southern usage. Everett Dick, The Dixie Frontier (New York,

1948), 313.

11. Also noted in D. A. E.

12. Perhaps this pronunciation derives from a misuse of the French oignon, from

which the English word is derived. The British surname Onions is sometimes pro-

nounced "Onighans." H. L. Mencken, The American Language: Supplement II (New

York, 1948), 460. D. A. E. notes an 1825 dialect rendering of "ingyons."

13. Beal was an old English variant of boil in the sense of skin eruption. Its survival

is noted in John T. Krumpelmann, "West Virginia Peculiarities," American Speech,

XIV (1939), 155.

14. In 1827 a Georgian noted that his neighbors used smart chance for "large quan-

tity." M. M. Mathews, ed., "Sherwood's Provincialisms," Dialect Notes, V (1927),

415-421.

15. Here Hannah Fancher supports a British pronunciation. The four syllable version

was used in New Critical Pronouncing Dictionary . . . by an American Gentleman

(Burlington, N. J., 1813).