A social gathering for husking Indian corn, which sometimes ended badly.

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1721.  Fair day; husking at Colo’s.—B. Lynde, ‘Diary’ (1880), p. 132. (N.E.D.)

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1764.  One of the Patients went into a large Company who were husking.—Boston Evening Post, Jan. 30.

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1793.  

          The laws of husking ev’ry wight can tell;
And sure no laws he ever keeps so well;
For each red ear a gen’ral kiss he gains,
With each smut ear she smuts the luckless swains;
But when to some sweet maid the prize is cast,
Red as her lips, and taper as her waist,
She walks around, and culls one favor’d beau,
Who leaps, the luscious tribute to bestow.
Joel Barlow, ‘The Hasty-Pudding.’    

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1821.  A woman of Winchester, Va., in a fit of intoxication, was lately burned to death at a corn husking.—Lancaster (Pa.) Journal, Dec. 7.

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1823.  [A candle was] used by the family while employed in husking corn in one of the barns.—Mass. Spy, Dec. 3.

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1825.  The Husking … prevails throughout New England only…. When the practice began, it was an act of neighbourly kindness; a piece of downright labour, done for nothing. It is now, a wicked and foolish frolick, at another man’s expense.—John Neal, ‘Brother Jonathan,’ i. 53.

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1828.  “A husking as it is,” described in The Yankee, p. 277 (Portland, Maine).

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1830.  Levi Odle, who was lately killed at a “husking bee” in Burns, N.Y., was drunk.—Mass. Spy, Nov. 24.

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a. 1838.  A HUSKING FROLIC IN KENTUCKY. A fight came off at Maysville, Kentucky, on the 20th, in which a Mr. Coulster was stabbed in the side, and is dead; a Mr. Gibson was well hacked with a knife; a Mr. Farrs was dangerously wounded…. This entertainment was the winding-up of the corn husking frolic, when all, doubtless, were right merry with good whisky.—N.Y. Daily Whig, cited by J. S. Buckingham, ‘America,’ i. 155.

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1843.  “THE HUSKING.”—‘Lowell Offering,’ iv. 63–8 [Title].

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1846.  

        The sweetest girl of all I know
  Is charming FANNY HALL;
The wildest at a husking,
  The gayest at a ball.
Charles G. Eastman, ‘Fanny Hall,’ Knick. Mag., xxviii. 383 (Nov.).    

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1847.  I must pass on to the antagonisms of the corn-husking. When the crop was drawn in, the ears were heaped into a long pile or rick, a night fixed on, and the neighbors notified, rather than invited, for it was an affair of mutual assistance. As they assembled at night-fall, the green glass quart whisky bottle, stopped with a cob, was handed to every one, man and boy, as they arrived, to take a drink. [Then follows an animated description of the choice of sides, and of the rivalry, the tricks employed, &c.]—Dr. D. Drake, ‘Pioneer Life in Kentucky,’ pp. 54–6 (Cincinnati, 1870).

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1850.  

        The master of the village school, sleek of hair and smooth of tongue,
To the quaint tune of some old psalm, a husking-ballad sung.
J. G. Whittier, ‘The Huskers,’ 51.    

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1851.  He talked of the meeting in the woods, a turkey-hunt the next moon, a husking-bee, thanksgiving ball, racing, and a variety of things.—S. Judd, ‘Margaret,’ p. 48 (Bartlett).

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