Florida crackers were
colonial-era
British and
American pioneer settlers and their descendants in what is now the U.S. state of
Florida. The first of these arrived in 1763 after
Spain traded Florida to Great Britain following the latter's victory over France in the
Seven Years' War.
[1]
.....
By the 1760s, the ruling classes, both in Britain and in the
American colonies, applied the term "cracker" to
Scots-Irish and
English American settlers of the remote southern back country, as noted in a letter to the
Earl of Dartmouth: "I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great
boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who often change their places of
abode."
[2] The word was later associated with the cowboys of Georgia and Florida, many of them descendants of those early frontiersmen who had migrated South. Also used by Florida cowboys, as with picture of Florida cracker Bone Mizell.
....
Among some Floridians, the term is used as a proud or
jocular self-description. Since the huge influx of new residents into Florida in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, from the northern parts of the
United States and from
Mexico and
Latin America, the term "Florida Cracker" is used informally by some Floridians to indicate that their families have lived in the state for many generations.