''Swamp Yankee'' is a colloquial term for rural
Yankee
The term ''Yankee'' and its contracted form ''Yank'' have several interrelated meanings, all referring to people from the United States. Its various senses depend on the context, and may refer to New Englanders, residents of the Northern United St ...
s (northeastern Americans). The term "Yankee" connotes urbane
industriousness
Diligence—carefulness and persistent effort or work—is one of the seven heavenly virtues. It is indicative of a work ethic, the belief that work is good in itself.
In students
Bernard et al. suggest that diligence in students is define ...
, whereas the term "Swamp Yankee" suggests a more countrified, stubborn, independent, and less-refined sub-type.
Usage
Ruth Schell claims that the phrase is used predominantly in
Rhode Island by immigrant minority groups to describe a rural person "of stubborn, old-fashioned, frugal, English-speaking
Yankee
The term ''Yankee'' and its contracted form ''Yank'' have several interrelated meanings, all referring to people from the United States. Its various senses depend on the context, and may refer to New Englanders, residents of the Northern United St ...
stock, of good standing in the rural community, but usually possessing minimal formal education and little desire to augment it."
Swamp Yankees themselves react to the term with slight disapproval or indifference.… The term is unfavorably received when used by a city dweller with the intention of ridiculing a country resident; however, when one country resident refers to another as a swamp Yankee, no offense is taken, and it is treated as good-natured jest.
At one time, swamp Yankees had their own variety of isolated country music, according to Harvard professor Paul Di Maggio and Vanderbilt University professor Richard Peterson. Kerry W. Buckley describes President
Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge (born John Calvin Coolidge Jr.; ; July 4, 1872January 5, 1933) was the 30th president of the United States from 1923 to 1929. Born in Vermont, Coolidge was a Republican lawyer from New England who climbed up the ladder of Ma ...
as a swamp Yankee in a 2003 article in ''The New England Quarterly'', defining the term as the "scion of an old family that was no longer elite or monied". Schell predicts that "the term swamp Yankee is becoming less known and may be unknown in a few generations…. Probably the best reason for its disappearance is the vanishing of the swamp Yankee himself as society moves toward urban and suburban life."
History
The origin of the term "Swamp Yankee" is unclear. The term "Yankee" originated in the mid-17th century (probably in 1683 by
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People ...
settlers), but the variation "Swamp Yankee" is not attested until the 20th century, according to . Several theories speculate that "Swamp Yankees" were the undesirable, trouble-making New Englanders who moved to the swamps of southeastern New England upon arriving in the New World in the 17th century. Others speculate that the original "Swamp Yankees" were colonial-era
indentured servants
Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract, called an " indenture", may be entered "voluntarily" for purported eventual compensation or debt repaymen ...
who were paid for their service with swamp land from the farmers to whom they were indentured. Still others claim that "Swamp Yankees" had ancestors who fought in the
Great Swamp Fight
The Great Swamp Fight or the Great Swamp Massacre was a crucial battle fought during King Philip's War between the colonial militia of New England and the Narragansett people in December 1675. It was fought near the villages of Kingston and W ...
of
King Philip's War
King Philip's War (sometimes called the First Indian War, Metacom's War, Metacomet's War, Pometacomet's Rebellion, or Metacom's Rebellion) was an armed conflict in 1675–1676 between indigenous inhabitants of New England and New England colon ...
. Another theory claims that the term originated during the
American Revolution
The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revoluti ...
when residents of
Thompson, Connecticut
Thompson is a town in Windham County, Connecticut, United States. The town was named after Sir Robert Thompson, an English landholder. The population was 9,189 at the 2020 census. Thompson is located in the northeastern corner of the state and i ...
fled to the surrounding swamps to escape a feared British invasion in 1776. They returned from the swamps several weeks later and were ridiculed as "Swamp Yankees".
There are several early references to the term which have survived in various periodicals. A 1901 article published in the ''Mahoney City American'' and ''Waterbury Democrat'' refers to an undertaker and a wealthy coal dealer from
Waterbury, Connecticut
Waterbury is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut on the Naugatuck River, southwest of Hartford and northeast of New York City. Waterbury is the second-largest city in New Haven County, Connecticut. According to the 2020 US Census, in ...
as "swamp yankees". A 1912 ''
Metropolitan Magazine'' article describes the son of a New England mill owner as a "Swamp Yankee". In 1921, ''Modern Connecticut Homes and Homecrafts'' describes a "swamp yankee" living in an old unpainted home in New England but caring about his beds of flowers. A bowling team in a 1922 Norwich, Connecticut newspaper called themselves the "Swamp Yankees". In 1935, the ''New York Times'' labeled "Swamp Yankees" as those driven out of a New England mill town by immigrants.
["Out of the Whirlwind", ''New York Times'', May 26, 1935]
See also
*
Bonackers
*
Country
A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. It may be a sovereign state or make up one part of a larger state. For example, the country of Japan is an independent, sovereign state, while ...
*
Cracker (pejorative)
Cracker, sometimes white cracker or cracka, is a racial epithet directed towards white people, used especially with regard to poor rural whites in the Southern United States. Although commonly a pejorative, it is also used in a neutral contex ...
*
Flag of New England
New England has no official flag. However, there have been many historical or modern banners used to represent the region in its history. While there are some variations, common designs include a plain colored field (usually red) with a pine tree ...
*
Johnny Reb
Johnny Reb is the national personification of the common soldier of the Confederacy. During the American Civil War and afterwards, Johnny Reb and his Union counterpart Billy Yank were used in speech and literature to symbolize the common sol ...
*
Piney (Pine Barrens resident)
*
Raggies
*
Redneck
''Redneck'' is a derogatory term chiefly, but not exclusively, applied to white Americans perceived to be crass and unsophisticated, closely associated with rural whites of the Southern United States.Harold Wentworth, and Stuart Berg Flexner, '' ...
*
Yankee
The term ''Yankee'' and its contracted form ''Yank'' have several interrelated meanings, all referring to people from the United States. Its various senses depend on the context, and may refer to New Englanders, residents of the Northern United St ...
*
Yankee ingenuity
Yankee ingenuity is a self-made stereotype of inventiveness, technical solutions to practical problems, "know-how", self-reliance and individual enterprise associated with the Yankees, who originated in New England and developed much of the indus ...
Notes
References
*Ruth Schell, "Swamp Yankee", ''American Speech'', 1963, Volume 38, No.2 (The
American Dialect Society
The American Dialect Society (ADS), founded in 1889, is a learned society "dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it." The Society p ...
, Published by Duke University Press ), pg. 121–123. accessed through
JSTOR
JSTOR (; short for ''Journal Storage'') is a digital library founded in 1995 in New York City. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now encompasses books and other primary sources as well as current issues of j ...
Alan Rosenberg "Is Swamp Yankee an insult or a badge of honor", ''Providence Journal'' Charlestown, February 29, 2008''Excerpt from Legendary Connecticut'' by David Philips*
Hans Kurath
Hans Kurath (13 December 1891 – 2 January 1992) was an American linguist of Austrian origin. He was full professor for English and Linguistics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The many varieties of regional English that he encountered d ...
, ''Linguistic Atlas of New England, II'' (Providence, R.I.), map 450.
*Captain Harry Allen Chippendale, ''Sails and Whales'' (Boston, 1951), pp 105–6.
*Philip Jerome Cleveland, ''It's Bright in My Valley'' (Westwood, N.J., 1962), p. 30.
*"Sayings of the Oracle", ''
Yankee
The term ''Yankee'' and its contracted form ''Yank'' have several interrelated meanings, all referring to people from the United States. Its various senses depend on the context, and may refer to New Englanders, residents of the Northern United St ...
'' (August, 1962), p. 12.
*Joseph Bensman; Arthur J. Vidich, "The New Middle Classes: Their Culture and Life Styles", ''Journal of Aesthetic Education'', Vol.4, No. 1, (Jan., 1970), pp. 23–39.
*Richard A. Peterson; Paul Di Maggio, "From Region to Class, the Changing Locus of Country Music: A Test of the Massification Hypothesis", ''Social Forces'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 499.
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