COCKTAIL



I found this is my files; the Tamony papers probably have it, though.

It's from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, ANSWERS TO QUERIES, 22 April 1917, pg.

2, col. 6:



(...) Reddall writes: Cocktail--The national American "drink," said to

have been invented by one Elizabeth Flanagan. She was the widow of an Irish

soldier who fell in the service of this country. She appears after his death

to have been a sutler, and in that capacity to have followed a troop of

Virginia horse who, under command of Col. Burr, took up quarters in the winter

of 1779 in a place called the "Four Corners," situated on the road between

Tarrytown and White Plains, Westchester County, N. Y. Here Elizabeth Flanagan

set up a hotel, which was largely patronized by the officers of the French and

American forces quartered in the vicinity, and here it is that the drink known

as the "cocktail" was invented.



O. K., so why did Washington Irving, who lived in Westchester County and

who wrote a history of New York and who was not one to ignore the region's

glories, say that the "cocktail" was invented in Baltimore?



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