Origin of the Term ‘Hoosier’

Abstract

There has been a tradition in our family, which I have known since boyhood, that Aaron Short, an older brother of my grandfather, gave to the inhabitants of Indiana the name "Hoosiers". So far as I know, my grandfather and his brother Aaron were the only members of the family present on the occasion in which Aaron used the word which later came to be applied to himself and other companions from the hills of Southern Indiana. They were then employed in construction work on the Canal at the falls of the Ohio River near Louisville, Kentucky.