Digging again through old newspapers, I came across another very early use in print of the nickname “Tar Heels.” A little over a year ago I wrote about the appearance of the nickname in an ad in an 1864 Fayetteville paper, which was a contender for the earliest use of “Tar Heels” in print. Now we can move it back another year to 1863 thanks to a letter from a Civil War soldier to a Raleigh newspaper.
Sgt. G. W. Timberlake, a member of Company A of the 3rd Regiment of North Carolina Troops, had a letter published in the Raleigh Semi-Weekly Standard on June 2, 1863. Writing from a “Camp Near the Old U.S. Ford” in Virginia, Timberlake describes the action of the second Battle of Fredericksburg and lists casualties from the regiment. Apparently the North Carolina soldiers did a particularly good job of holding their line. Timberlake writes,
The troops from other States call us “Tar Heels.” I am proud of the name, as tar is a sticky substance, and the “Tar Heels” stuck up like a sick kitten to a hot brick, while many others from a more oily State slipped to the rear, and left the “Tar Heels” to stick it out.
It’s a great quote, and confirms the origin of the nickname in the Civil War.
Anyone want to guess which was the “more oily State”?
Hat tip to Nick (and to digitalization) for another vivid discovery — the etymology of Tar Heel just keeps giving….
“Like a sick kitten to a hot brick” was new to me, but apparently it’s an artifact of the fireplace era…
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=sick+kitten%2Chot+brick&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2010&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Csick%20kitten%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bsick%20kitten%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BSick%20Kitten%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Chot%20brick%3B%2Cc0
Here’s an 1857 example from Thomas C. Bowie’s diary:
http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-antebellum/5337