pedler and peddler and pedlar

The sole purpose of this brief essay is to see if I can trace the appearance of peddler in English not only earlier than the first apparent OED attestation of it (1872) but even before the appearance of this spelling in the Dec. 23, 1823 Troy Sentinel. As you no doubt know by now, Clement Clark Moore used the spelling pedlar for St. Nicholas in his copyright version of the poem (1844) as well as the four extant hand-written copies of it. Yet, the reference librarian from the Troy (NY) Public library has assured me that the paper used the spelling peddler in its Dec. 23, 1823 publication of the poem. Moore's 1822 handwritten copy of it doesn't survive. If what the librarian told me is true, and who doubts a librarian?, then this pushes the appearance of peddler back 49 years in English.

I wanted to see if this was the earliest appearance of this spelling in English. One of the best ways to determine this is to check legal data bases. Why? Because there were statutes licensing fellows called "hawkers" or "pedlars" going back to the late 17th century in England. More precisely, there was "An Act for Licensing Hawkers, Pedlars and Petty Chapmen" passed by Parliament in 1697 (8 & 9 Wm III ch. 25, secs. 3, 8. South Carolina, for one example, took over this statute in 1737 with the same spelling.) Since many American states adoped this regulatory statue in the 19th century relating to hawkers and pedlars, I thought it would be interesting to see when and where the spelling of pedlar became peddler.

Being Misled

First, I was misled. Then, I hit "paydirt." Here is what I mean. Let's begin with the experience of being misled. I ran across the term spelled peddler in an 1808 TN legal case. That case referred to an 1803 statute on peddlers, but I had no access to the TN session records from that year. So, we have pushed the OED back at least 65 years. But, NO! I decided, just to be sure, to go back to the "hard copy" of the 1808 TN case (I had relied on the "peddlers" reference from an online version --Westlaw.) When I opened up vol. 1 of the Tennessee Reports, p. 261, case of Martin v. McKnight, I saw that the word was actually spelled pedler and not peddler. Thus, the mystery deepens. I wasn't so concerned with why data bases screw up as to when the first appearance of the spelling peddler actually was. So, I continued my search. The next oldest peddler reference, in my online data base, in law, comes also from a TN case in 1816, where the case referred to a "crockery-ware peddler. In fact, when I checked the hard copy, it only said "crockery-ware pedler," Peyton v. Butler, 3 Tenn Rep. 100, 101 (1816).

Bingo!

I continued my search for the elusive first appearance of the spelling peddler in America. I knew that it appeared in the Troy Sentinel on Dec. 23, 1823, but this would be an unusual place for its first appearance. It seemed as if my luck had run out, because as I searched cases, the next earliest reference to peddler came from a MA case of 1824. But I decided to check into that case, Commonwealth v. Isaac Samuel, 2 Pick. 103 (March Term 1824) anyway. Here is what I found.

This MA case also has to do with a hawker/peddler statute enacted by the Commonwealth (they were frequently passed in the late 18th/early 19th century. Their principal focus was to prevent the sale of foreign good--manufactured outside of the United States-by these people). The online data base used the spelling of peddler. I thought that this might be a confirmation that such a spelling was in place early in 1824, but then I looked more closely. The hard copy also had the spelling as peddler. When the case used the spelling of peddler, it was quoting a statute enacted in 1820, which talks about "every hawker, peddler, petty chapman, etc..." Thus, the 1824 MA case took me back to the MA version of the statute passed in 1820, which used the spelling peddler.

Conclusion

It would make sense that orthographic change for the spelling of pedler/pedlar to become peddler would come from MA about 1820. After all, MA was in the forefront of educational reform at the time, and spelling change was just one aspect of it. It would be most likely to look to the statute as the place where this change was first manifest also. Thus I will now say that it appears that the first spelling of the word as peddler arose in 1820, 52 years before the OED so attested the spelling. In order to fully be sure of this, I would need to check the peddler/pedler/pedlar statutes from other states, but I think I can live with the uncertainty....

1705