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Florida Cracker Heritage

Florida cracker refers to colonial era English 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.

The term "cracker" was in use during the Elizabethan era to describe braggarts. The original root of this is the Middle English word crack, meaning "entertaining conversation" (One may be said to "crack" a joke); this term is still in use in Northern England, Ireland and Scotland.

By the 1760s, the English, both at home and in the American colonies, applied the term "cracker" to Scots-Irish and English American settlers of the remote southern back country, associated with the cowboys of Georgia and Florida, many of them descendants of those early frontiersmen who had migrated South. Also referred to as Florida cowboys or “cracker cowboy”.

Among some Floridians in modern day, 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.

It is considered a source of pride to be descended from "frontier people who did not just live but flourished in a time before air conditioning, mosquito repellent and screens”. A time when hunting, gathering and fishing were sole sources for food.

Salt Cracker Fish Camp savors that heritage with their Southern dockside cookin’ in the heart of Clearwater Beach.