Precise meaning now uncertain.
1844. [And so the Henry Clay men] go on with their Bears, pump-borers, coons, virgin heifers, crocodiles, defaulters, and all sorts of both animals and men, in order to get up a drunken crowd…. Hackneyed office-hunters, ignorant buffoons, and vulgar songsters, under the trite appellation of pump-borers, knife-grinders, and Bear the blacksmith.—Mr. Wentworth of Ill., House of Repr., April: Cong. Globe, p. 513, App.
