WATCH YOU
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LANGUAGE:
What Is A Yankee?
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i:\iti i p. wier
(Courtesy "Wilmington Srar-Ne\es")
Yonkers. A generic term used in
"The Souih" lo describe “North¬
erners."
Yankees. A pervasive word embrac¬
ing anyone coming from north of the il¬
lusive Mason-Dixon line.
But are all these people truly
Yankees?
The writer was born in 1923 in Con¬
necticut. of third generation Irish fore¬
bears.
Some of his antecedents fought at Lit¬
tle Round Top in the battle of Gettys¬
burg during the Civil War. Two others
helped lo hum Atlanta.
Another was involved in the famous
New England "round robin." He sailed
junk hardware to the west coast of
Africa, in trade for slaves, thence to
Charleston
ю
barter the slave flesh for
cotton bales or molasses, consigned to
the textile factories or rum distilleries
of the populous Northeast.
These arc impeccable qualifications
for being a Yankee.
However, the writer is not a Yankee.
Not a Yankee, you say?
A true Yankee hails only from the
southeastern quarter of Connecticut.
Not Chicago. Brooklyn. Boston.
Michigan. Illinois, or wherever. A Yan¬
kee is from an area in Connecticut
about the si/e of Mecklenburg County
in North Carolina.
The origin of the word Yankee has
several attributions. A couple of them
— liked by this writer are: I.) Early
Dutch settlers in New England, a cen¬
tury or more before the Revolutionary
War. had the usual Germanic difficulty
in pronouncing the word "English." It
came out "Yanglish" or "Yangish." 2.)
The Indians of southern New England,
predominantly Mohegans and Nar
ragansetts. had a similar problem with
"English." It came out "Yangcrs" or
"Yankeesh."
The writer, being an incurable
romantic, prefers the latter.
Who really knows?
Considering the well documented ex-
20
amples above, it doesn’t take too much
thv ught on the readers part to pluck out
the root of the word Yankee. There are.
to be sure, several less credulous ver¬
sions.
Back where we started.
What or who then is a Yankee?
A dyed-in-the-wool Yankee fre¬
quently isn’t aware he is one.
A genuine Yankee is from old settler
stock, with tracings back to the late 16
or early 1700s. having fled or been
transported from England for various
crimes against the Crown. English
ships landed absconding debtors, reli¬
gious heretics and Puritans by the
hundreds in the American colonies.
Embezzlers and swindlers abounded, as
did failed gentrymen. They were, by
and large, considered to be dangerous
people and better off in the wilderness
than being allowed to sow the seeds of
crime and discontent in the Mother¬
land.
It was the origin of the great Ameri¬
can melting pot. and the start of the
Yankee.
Along the line a slight trace of French
and Italian crept in. Papists, (or
Popists). were not welcome in the colo¬
nies. hut they did ease in occasionally.
A bit of romancing from time to time
with a Narraganseti or Mohcgan
maiden helped to put a permanent tan
on your pure Yankee. ("They say he’s
part Indian going back, y'know").
By the early 1800s this amalganious
mixture was well entrenched in south¬
eastern Connecticut. What they didn't
own east of the Mississippi and as far
south as the Carolina and Georgia set¬
tlements. they held on option giving
them “first refusal" on anything up for
sale.
Now enters the Yankee Peddler!
The Connecticut Yankees sold their
ingenious inventions from New En¬
gland to the Florida swamps; from
Pennsylvania to the Oregon settlements.
They invented the cotton gin.
Colanders, bean shellers. snell fish
hooks, common and safety pins, gill
nets, trawler doors, wristwutches. the
sewing machine, patent medicines,
repeating rifles and pistols, and the self
contained cartridge are all Yankee in¬
ventions.
The Yankee also invented, (or de¬
vised through necessity) the Gloucester
schooner, to this day the only sailing
vessel able to maintain ten knots only
a point or so off the wind.
Your Yankee wasn’t above a bit of
illegal trading. The peddler from Con¬
necticut sold, by the bushels, wooden
(Continued on page 30)
Train
Ferries
On The
Albemarle
They may rel 111*11 I
о
re¬
lieve “The World's Ixmtf-
e.sl Bridge».**
By BILLY ART III It
If the Norfolk & Southern Railroad
closes its 76-ycar old bridge across Al¬
bemarle Sound next year, the ancient
mode of moving freight cars — floating
them — across that great sheet of wa¬
ter may be restored.
And. if that slower method is not
somehow' provided again, freight costs
on the South side of the sound will rise
appreciably.
In the 1880s. the development of tim¬
ber interests in the five counties on the
north side of the sound and the half
dozen more on the south side made it
necessary to run trains from Norfolk to
Bclhaven. But the sound water sepa¬
rated two breaks in the railroad at Edcn-
ton on the North and Mackeys Ferry on
the south. To unload freight from cars
onto the ferry and then to reload onto
rail cars on the other side was too ex¬
pensive. So. the railroad operated a
water transport. Onto it an entire train
was run and floated across. This took
2‘Л
hours.
Then, when the Norfolk & Southern
further extended its lines on the south
side to Plymouth. Washington and on
THE STATE. JUNE 1986
