Mr. Lee,
Thanks for an engrossing post. Are there any published contemporaneous references to the use of the word "cowboy" in colonial South Carolina? -- e.g., in a colonial-era newspaper or journal.

Tt strikes me as possible the the word came over from Britain and developed two different usages, one negative, in Revolutionary New York, and the other neutral, in colonial South Carolina. This might -- I emphasize might -- explain how the word long had a dual usage (and still does), though the conventional wisdom among some word-detectives is that the neutral use of the word cowboy didn't flower until after the Civil War. The view now seems suspect.
Dan