It originated in the Appalachian Mountains of the U. S. when the early settlers from Holland, Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, and Africa combined their dance traditions. They called it buck dancing, flat footing, or just plain dancing. It was usually done to live fiddle music. Clogging and tap dancing have common roots. Clogging became the country cousin of tap.
Tap is high impact, while clogging is low.
The term clogging comes from the heavy shoes once worn by the working people of Great Britain. In Holland, Belgium, and France, the dance was done with wooden shoes and today many people still believe that cloggers dance in wooden shoes. In the English steel mills in the mid 18th century, dancing in wooden clogs was a popular pastime. Competitions were held, and they danced on cobblestones with the upper body motionless, while the feet and legs did all the work. Heavy wooden clogs were a hindrance so a switch was made to leather shoes.