Tennessee: Hog and Hominy State (nickname)

“Hog and hominy” s a classic combination of Southern foods. Several states that produced pigs and corn were “hog and hominy states,” but the nickname was most frequently applied to Tennessee.  “The great Hog and Hominy State of Tennessee” was cited in print in 1852.
   
Tennessee’s nickname of the “Hog and Hominy State” became infrequently used by the 1940s and is of mostly historical interest today.
 
     
(Oxford English Dictionary)
hog, n.
The flesh of a pig used as food; pork, bacon. In later use chiefly U.S. (colloq.), esp. in hog and hominy.
1776   W. Hooper in Lett. James Murray (1901) 239   That I might enjoy in my own Cabin, eat my Hogg & Hominee without anything to make me afraid.
1816   Massachusetts Spy 10 Jan.  [If a man] can be content with hog and hommany, he can live easier in Ohio.
1854   T. B. Thorpe Hive of Bee Hunter 81,  I can give you plenty to eat; for, besides hog and hominy, you can have bear-ham and bear-sausages.
     
Google Books
Notes on Political Economy:
As Applicable to the United States
By Nathaniel A. Ware
New-York, NY: Leavitt, Trow, and Company
1840    
Pg. 90:
This is that fixed hog and hominy state, or rather the log cabin state, which means, raise meat and bread and eat them, and wear homespun.
 
25 June 1845, Republican Banner (Nashville, TN), “Correspondence of the Rep. Banner,” pg. 2, col. 4:
This I hope will enable you and your readers to understand the press in which Mr. Brown is in this glorious section of hog and hominy.
 
Chronicling America
10 June 1852, Fayetteville (TN) Observer, pg. 3, col. 3:
The promising prospect of an abundant Corn crop in this county, with the anticipation of high prices for pork, can not fail to produce a happy class of feelings upon the Hog-growers of the great Hog and Hominy State of Tennessee.
 
Chronicling America
2 December 1852, Fayetteville (TN) Observer, pg. 3, col. 2:
The frequent boasts of our contemporaries of the press, of the abundant yield and the uncommonly large sized vegetables grown in their respective localities this year, is a sure guarantee that the great “hog and hominy State,” as Tennessee is some time denominated, is not only bountifully supplied with all that is needed to fee her own household, but that she has enough for the “whole world and rest of mankind.”
 
Chronicling America
29 August 1878, Weekly Democratic Statesman (Austin, TX), “The Candidates in Tennessee,” pg. 2, col. 2:
His ability, as often illustrated at the bar, is unquestioned, and if elected Tennessee will never have reason to blush for the morals or folly, but to boast that wisdom and honor have again guided the fortunes of the ancient swine and hominy State.
 
Google Books
Tennessee Blue Book
Nashville, TN: Secretary of State
1890 (This Google Books date may be incorrect.—ed.)
Pg. 125:
Other nicknames include: the “Big Bend State,” which refers to the Indian name for the Tennessee River, “The River with the Big Bend”; the “Hog and Hominy State,” now obsolete but formerly applied because “the corn and pork products of Tennessee reached such great proportions between 1830 and 1840…”; ...
 
Chronicling America
22 August 1913, Devils Lake (ND) Inter-Ocean, pg. 4, col. 3:
MORE CORN THAN EVER BEFORE BEING RAISED IN NORTH DAKOTA.
Jamestown Alert: (...) North Dakota will soon be correctly classed with the “hog and hominy states,” and the change is being rapidly brought about.
   
15 January 1925, Herald of Gospel Liberty, “Nicknames of the States,” pg. 65, col. 1:
Tenn.—“Big Bend,” ““Volunteer,’ “Hog-and-Hominy.”
 
19 March 1926, The Sun (Baltimore, MD), pg. 1, col. 3:
Bruce And “Jim” Reed Invited To Test Tennessee Hospitality
Resident Of “Hog And Hominy” State Wants To Prove McKellar Has Misinterpreted Constituents’ Views On Use Of Liquor
 
OCLC WorldCat record
Hog and Hominy Club, Charlottesville, Virginia. Composed of farmers of Albemarle County, Virginia. Organized in 1912.
Author: Hog and Hominy Club, Charlottesville, Va.
Publisher: [Charlottesville, Va.], [Jarmans], [1933]
Edition/Format:   Print book : English
 
OCLC WorldCat record
“Hog and hominy” : corn in early East Tennessee
Author: Dora B Bowlin
Publisher: Sneeedville, Tennessee : Mountaineer Printing Co., 1981.
Edition/Format:   Print book : English
 
Google Books
Encyclopedia of Tennessee
By Nancy Capace
St. Clair Shores, MI: Somerset Publishers, Inc.
2000
Pg. 3:
Tennessee received the nickname of the Hog and Hominy State because corn and pork products of Tennessee reached such great proportions between 1800 and 1840. The name eventually became obsolete and is today not used.
 
OCLC WorldCat record
Hog & hominy : soul food from Africa to America
Author: Frederick Douglass Opie
Publisher: New York : Columbia University Press, ©2008.
Series: Arts and traditions of the table.
Edition/Format:   eBook : Document : EnglishView all editions and formats
Database: WorldCat
Summary:
From the Publisher: Frederick Douglass Opie deconstructs and compares the foodways of people of African descent throughout the Americas, interprets the health legacies of black culinary traditions, and explains the concept of soul itself, revealing soul food to be an amalgamation of West and Central African social and cultural influences as well as the adaptations blacks made to the conditions of slavery and freedom in the Americas. Sampling from travel accounts, periodicals, government reports on food and diet, and interviews with more than thirty people born before 1945, Opie reconstructs an interrelated history of Moorish influence on the Iberian Peninsula, the African slave trade, slavery in the Americas, the emergence of Jim Crow, the Great Migration, the Great Depression, and the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. His grassroots approach reveals the global origins of soul food, the forces that shaped its development, and the distinctive cultural collaborations that occurred among Africans, Asians, Europeans, and Americans throughout history. Opie shows how food can be an indicator of social position, a site of community building and cultural identity, and a juncture at which different cultural traditions can develop and impact the collective health of a community.