ORIGIN OF “DIXIE”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 May 1938, Page 9

ORIGIN OF “DIXIE”

NAME OF SOUTHERN STATES. Many differ over the way the southern States came to be known as “Dixie,” says a Florida correspondent of the “Christian Science Monitor.” A prominent banker in Richmond, Virginia, claims the terms was first applied to money issued by a New Orleans bank before the Civil War. The money was principally in 10-dol-lar bills. Because so many of the people in Louisiana were French, the bills were printed in French on one side, and in English on the other. The French word for ten is “dix,” and it wasn’t long until everybody was calling the bills “Dixie.” From this, Louisiana came to be known as the “Land of the Dixies,” or “Dixie Land.” Not long after this Dan Emmett, a northern minstrel, composed a song named “Dixie” for a show performance in New York City. After this show became a success, the name “Dixie” was attached to the entire South. Another interesting explanation is that a kind-hearted slave owner of a large plantation on Manhattan Island during the latter part of the eighteenth century was named Dixie. His kind treatment of the negroes caused them to regard his plantation as an earthly paradise. When any of the slaves were taken away they pined for “Dixie’s,” singing and talking about it constantly. Then when slavery moved southwards in search of newer lands, the same ideal of Dixie was taken along, and the chants of the former slaves of his plantation became so widespread that Dixie became a name for all kind of southern homes of negroes. A fourth explanation is that Dixie evolved from the name of Jeremiah Dixon, one of two English engineers who surveyed the United States and laid out the Mason-Dixon Line in 1767 as a line between Pennsylvania and Maryland and which came to be known as a division between slaveholding States. When Texas joined the Union the negroes frequently sang of it as Dixie, and many believed that it had taken this name from the Mason and Dixon line.