hookling

Now — as I sit here writing I see half a dozen carriages under the shade of the trees — coachmen on their boxes, talking, laughing &c — some hookling, they call it. They have a bone hook some thing like a crochet needle — and they hook them selves woollen gloves — Some are reading Hymn books, or pretending. The small footmen are playing marbles under the trees.

1840–1860, Mary Boykin Chesnut, Civil War journal (revised version) quoted by Elisabeth Showalter Muhlenfeld in her Mary Boykin Chesnut: A Biography, chapter four: “1840–1860”, page 44