<P> In 1900, Meredith Nicholson wrote The Hoosiers, an early attempt to study the etymology of the word as applied to Indiana residents . Jacob Piatt Dunn, longtime secretary of the Indiana Historical Society, published The Word Hoosier, a similar attempt, in 1907 . Both chronicled some of the popular and satirical etymologies circulating at the time and focused much of their attention on the use of the word in the Upland South to refer to woodsmen, yokels, and rough people . Dunn traced the word back to the Cumbrian hoozer, meaning anything unusually large, derived from the Old English hoo (as at Sutton Hoo), meaning "high" and "hill". The importance of immigrants from northern England and southern Scotland was reflected in numerous placenames including the Cumberland Mountains, the Cumberland River, and the Cumberland Gap . Nicholson defended the people of Indiana against such an association, while Dunn concluded that the early settlers had adopted the nickname self - mockingly and that it had lost its negative associations by the time of Finley's poem . </P> <P> Johnathan Clark Smith subsequently showed that Nicholson and Dunn's earliest sources within Indiana were mistaken . A letter by James Curtis cited by Dunn and others as the earliest known use of the term was actually written in 1846, not 1826 . Similarly, the use of the term in an 1859 newspaper item quoting an 1827 diary entry by Sandford Cox was more likely an editorial comment and not from the original diary. Smith's earliest sources led him to argue that the word originated as a term along the Ohio River for flatboatmen from Indiana and did not acquire its pejorative meanings until 1836, after Finley's poem . </P> <P> William Piersen, a history professor at Fisk University, argued for a connection to the black Methodist minister Rev. Harry Hosier (c. 1750--May 1806), who evangelized the American frontier at the beginning of the 19th century as part of the Second Great Awakening . "Black Harry" had been born a slave in North Carolina and sold north to Baltimore, Maryland, before gaining his freedom and beginning his ministry around the end of the American Revolution . He was a close associate and personal friend of Bishop Francis Asbury, the "Father of the American Methodist Church". Dr. Benjamin Rush said that, "making allowances for his illiteracy, he was the greatest orator in America" and his sermons called on Methodists to reject slavery and champion the common working man . Piersen proposed that Methodist communities inspired by his example took or were given a variant spelling of his name (possibly influenced by the "yokel" slang) during the decades after his ministry . </P> <P> According to Washington County newspaper reports of the time, Abraham Stover was Colonel of the Indiana Militia . He was a colorful figure in early Washington County history . Along with his son - in - law, John B. Brough, he was considered one of the two strongest men in Washington County, IN . He was always being challenged to prove his might, and seems to have won several fights over men half his age . After whipping six or eight men in a fist fight in Louisville, Ky, he cracked his fists and said, "Ain't I a husher," which was changed in the news to "Hoosier," and thus originated the name of Hoosier in connection with Indiana men . </P>

How did indiana get the name hoosier state