By Spessard Stone
Until the massive migrations into Florida from other states and countries in the last half of this century, Crackers were the most common social class. They were Florida’s "plain people," the farmers and cattlemen.
The etymology of Cracker, accepted by all Crackers to whom this writer has spoken, is that given by the following writers:
George Gillett Keen (1827-1902) in an article on August 11, 1899 in The Florida Index, a Lake City, Fla. newspaper, stated of Crackers, "The name originated not as the Georgia crackers did, from cracking corn on a hand mill, but from the cracking of whips in driving their herds to pasture."
Alfred Jackson Hanna and Kathryn Abbey Hanna in Lake Okeechobee Wellspring of the Everglades (1948) elaborated:
"The Florida cowboys' chief weapon was a strong whip, twelve to eighteen feet of braided buckskin fastened to a handle twelve to eighteen inches long. Great skill was required for the making of a whip; the cost of each was from $5 to $20.
"Cowmen became dexterous with this implement. An expert could curl the whip around the neck of the friskiest calf or lay open a strip on the side of the wildest steer.
"The pop or crack resulting from its use sounded like a rifle shot and is claimed to have resounded for several miles.
"The name 'cracker, frequently applied to countrymen of Georgia and Florida, is supposed to have originated as a cattle term."
Crackers once had a very distinctive vocabulary and accent, which could be like a foreign language to non-Crackers.
The following article, originally printed in the Savannah Morning News of September 19, 1886, and as “A Buckeye Meets A Cracker” reprinted by the author in The Herald-Advocate (Wauchula, Fla.) of July 16, 1991, provides a humorous glimpse of a bygone time:
"A sand scrub in Florida is a sand bank or hill where, on account of the poverty of the soil, the trees and shrubs grow very low and scrubby. These spots are sometimes of but a few acres in extent, and again they cover several hundred acres. The immigrant is generally puzzled to know what sand scrub is.
"An Iowa man showed his knowledge of the Florida terms in the following manner:
"Landing in Lakeland several years ago, when the place was the terminus of the South Florida railroad, he attempted to reach Bartow, fifteen miles distant, in the good old-fashioned, though very popular way, on foot.
"He had just come from a place of firm footing, and ere he reached his destination he fully realized that Florida sand was a hard road to travel.
"Weary and no doubt somewhat disgusted, he approached a cabin by the roadside and meekly asked the inmate, a woman, to direct him on his way.
"The lady kindly told him to proceed in the direction he was going about a mile when he would come to a sand scrub and there he should take the left-hand road and follow that till he passed a bay head on one side and a big permeter patch on the other, and to go on till he came to a gallberry flat where he would strike the main road leading out though a grass pond into the flat woods.
"Here he would find a boy boarding off corn, and he could tell him better than she could.
"The Hawkeye bowed gracefully, and with a far away look in his eye, ambled on his now mysterious way, revolving on his perplexed cranium the meaning of all this.
"Having gone, as he thought about a mile, he began to look for something, he knew not what.
"Presently he met a small boy whom he accosted: 'Say, bub, are you a sand scrub?'
"'No,' answered the youth, 'I'm a cracker.'
"The boy soon enlightened the traveler's bewildered understanding by directing his attention to a sand scrub just ahead.
"Our friend found his way to Bartow, and is now, we believe, a resident of Polk county, and familiar with the terms that so perplexed him on his first Florida journey."
For further commentary, Kyle VanLandingham recommended these sites: Cracking Up Cracker Myths and The Crackers.
January 8, 2011 & March 19, 2002