[f. prec. + -MAN.] A settler in the backwoods; so backwoodswoman.
1792. Gaz. of the U.S., 19 May, 3/1. You will have nothing more to do henceforward, than to DRAG DOWN YOUR GRAIN TO THE SEA-COAST, a trifling distance of five or six hundred miles (which is nothing to a back-woods-man) and there barter it for the ambrosial juices of the New-England stills.
1816. in J. Pickering, Vocab. U.S., 43.
1818. Cobbett, Resid. U. S. (1822), 305. The habitual disregard of comfort of an American back-woodsman.
1831. Carlyle, Sart. Res., II. viii. 208. An American Backwoodsman, who had to fell unpenetrated forests.
1884. Higginson, in Harper’s Mag., July, 281/1. A plain backwoodswoman … smoking her corn-cob pipe.
