This word appears as BANSHAW, 1764; BANJER, a. 1790; BANJORE, 1801. (N.E.D.)

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1764.  

          On festal days; or when their work is done;
Permit thy slaves to lead the choral dance,
To the wild banshaw’s melancholy sound.
Grainger, ‘The Sugar Cane,’ l. 582.    

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1787.  [The Virginia negro keeps] time and cadence, most exactly, with the music of the banjor (a large hollow instrument with three strings), and a quaqua (somewhat resembling a drum), until he exhausts himself.—American Museum, i. 215–6 (March).

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1801.  The sound of Banneker’s banjo [he is previously called “the sooty astronomer”] would be as tunable as Gallatin’s broken French.—The Port Folio, i. 270 (Phila.).

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1813.  They would have heard a Jew’s harp or a banjoo.—Mr. Quincy’s speech, Mass. Spy, Jan. 27.

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1817.  I have seen them [the negroes] reclining in their boats on the canal at Richmond, playing on the banjo, and singing in a style—I dare say, equal to a Venetian Gondolier.—J. K. Paulding, ‘Letters from the South,’ i. 118 (N.Y.). (Italics in the original.)

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1829.  Our attention was suddenly drawn to another quarter by the notes of a banjoe.—John P. Kennedy, ‘Swallow Barn,’ p. 101 (N.Y., 1851).

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1836.  The banjo, their national instrument, is known but in name, and in a few of the tunes which have survived.—J. K. Paulding, ‘Slavery in the U.S.,’ p. 194 (N.Y.).

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