The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-05-17
From the New York Sun.

From the New York Sun.
 NICE Indiana became the center .(01 and very omphalos of American - literature, as it had long been of American politics, connotation of fondness clings to the good word Hoo sier." James Byron Elmore, Charles War ren Fairbanks, Albert Jeremiah Bever- idge; to name them is to praise. The roll of Hoosiers Of credit and renown is longer than the Wabash. Yet night i'm penetrable still shrouds the cradle of that high vocable. In a recent publication of the Indiana Hositorical society Mir. the documentary history or legend. So far ''Hoosier" has not been traced fur ther back than the Indianapolis Journal of January 1, 1883, when it appeared in a carriers address, 'The Hoosier's Nest" by John Finley, written in 1880. The spell ing in the manuscript copy Is 'Hoosher" and the word Is in quotation marks. An extract will demonstrate the permanence of the political instinct and the multi farious activity of the Hoosiers:
 While hosts of Preachers, Doctors,
 Lawyers,
 All independent as wood sawyers,
 With men of every hue and fashion, Flock to this rising Hoosher' nation. Men who can legislate or plough.
 Wage politics or milk a cow
 So plastic are their various parts,
 Within the circle of their arts,
 With equal tact the Hoosher' looms
 Hunt offices or hunt raccoons.
 captain, colonel or a squire,
 Who would ascend little higher,
 Must court the people, honest souls, He bows, caresses and cajoles,
 Till they conceive he has more merit Than nature willed he should inherit And. running counter to his nature He runs into the Legislatures;
 Where if he pass for wise and mute, Or chance to steer the proper chute, In half dozen years or more
 He's qualified for Congress floor"
 The word took" toast at a Jack son day dinner in 1883 was 'The Hoosher State of Indiana" In August the pros- pectus of the Greencastle Hoosier was published. In 1884 MT. Finley was called 'the poet laureate of Hoosierland." Guess ing at the origin of the word had al- ready begun, and folk etymology was oe "Oih. ouCu 10 lno CAPldhdtfOnt dl- tributed to the Kentnckians, that Hoo sier'' comes from Who's yere,' the cry of the log cabin Indianian when ap- preaching a neighbours. As a matter of fact, that cry was "Hallo the houser' According to another guess, Col. John Jacob Lehmanowsky, soldier under Ma poleon and afterward a settler in In- diana. and lecturer on the Napoleonic wars. begot the word:
 'when the young men of the Indiana side of the Ohio river went to Louisville the Kentucky men boasted over them, calling them New Purchase Greenies,' claiming to be superior race. com posed of half horse. half alligator, and tipped off with snapping turtle. These taunts produced fights in the market house and streets of Louisville. On one occasion a stout bully from Indiana was victor in fist fight and having heard Colonel Lehmanowsky lecture on the Wars of Europe who always gave mar tial prowess to the German Hussars in a fight, pronouncing hussars 'hoosiers,' the Indianian, when the Kentuckan cried Enough jumped up and said: T am a Hoosier,' and hence the Indianians were called by that name"
 Dates smash this theory. apart from the ingenious absurdity of making a Polish officer pronounce "hussar" "hoo- sier' and put the new term into cir culation MT. James whitcomb Riley's barroom and mayhem theory 'sWhose year. Is just as tenable. In 1860 con- temporary of Finley's said that he first heard the word, then pronounced hush CT -'.u" as in "bush"--in 1924. 1926 or 1927. It was synonymous with "half horse, half alligator Between 1929 and 1881 tn, sound ''hoosher'' was established. Of course. phonetic recollections of thirty