The original canal was completed in 1830; and as the Polish soldier was not in this region earlier than 1840, ten years after the appearance of Finley’s poem, it is clear that those who would reach the truth of the matter must go back of “The Hoosier Nest” to find secure ground. No one has ever pretended that Finley originated the word, and it is not at all likely that he did so; but his poem gave it wide currency, and doubtless had much to do with fixing it on the Indianians. Bartlett, in his “Dictionary of Americanisms,” gives the novel solution of the problem that the men of superior strength throughout the early West, the heroes of log-rollings and house-raisings, were called “hushers” because of their ability to hush or quiet their antagonists; and that “husher” was a common term for a bully. The Ohio River boatmen carried the word to New Orleans, where a foreigner among them, in attempting to apply the word to himself, pronounced it “Hoosier.” Sulgrove may have had this meaning in mind in citing his Irishman, though he is not explicit. Hoosier as a Christian name has been known in the Ohio Valley; it was borne by a member of the Indiana Methodist Conference in 1835. A Louisville baker named Hoosier made a variety of sweet bread which was so much affected by Indiana people that they were called “Hoosier’s customers,” “Hoosier’s men,” and so on; but no date can be found for this. The Rev. T. A. Goodwin, first heard the word at Cincinnati in 1830, where it described a species of gingerbread, but without reference to Indiana. It is clear that the cultivated people of Indiana recognized the nickname in the early half of the century. Wright and Smith, as mentioned above, had sought to determine its genesis; and Tilghman A. Howard, when a congressman from Indiana, writing home to a friend in 1840, spoke casually of the “Hoosier State.”[11] The word occurs familiarly in Hall’s “New Purchase” (1855), and it is found also in Beste’s rare volume, “The Wabash; or, Adventures of an English Gentleman’s Family in the Interior of America,” published at London in the same year, and in Mrs. Beecher’s “From Dawn to Daylight” (1859). And when, in 1867, Sandford C. Cox published a book of verses containing the couplet,-- “If Sam is right, I would suggest A native Hoosier as the best,”-- the word was widely known, and thereafter it frequently occurs in all printed records touching the State. It is reported from Tennessee, Virginia, and South Carolina by independent observers, who say that the idea of a rough countryman is always associated with it. In Missouri it is sometimes used thus abstractly, but a native Indianian is usually meant, without reference to his manners or literacy.