Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US/N.Z.) a saloon, a public house.

1822		Quitman in Claiborne Life Quitman I 71: [Natchez is] a straggling town [...] consisting of warehouses, low taverns, groggeries, dens of prostitution, and gaming-houses [DA].
1835		J.H. Ingraham South West II 190: Wretched looking dwellings, occupied as ‘groggeries’ by free negroes.
1840		N.Y. Herald 15 Jan. 2/5: On making enquiry at the groggeries, [...] it was ascertained that several flats had been caught in the same net.
1850		‘Ned Buntline’ G’hals of N.Y. 5: On entering the groggery, the stranger made his way to the counter.
1863		‘Edmund Kirke’ My Southern Friends 68: A young man [...] should be ’bout better business than gittin’ inter brawls with low groggery keepers.
1866		Night Side of N.Y. 22: It’s the back yard of the old groggery, cheaply enclosed.
1873		J. O’Connor Wanderings of a Vagabond 10: Groggeries, bowling saloons, billiard tables, and other abominations of ‘the world, the flesh and the devil,’ were not tolerated.
1882		A. Trumble Mysteries of N.Y. 61: [He] can be seen daily in Union Square, spending in groggeries there the charity his mendicant talent had procured.
1887		Bulletin (Sydney) 15 Oct. 8/4: The [...] proceedings closed in a harmonious spirit, after which the grief-stricken crowd adjourned to ‘wet’ the emu at an adjacent groggery.
1891		J.A. Riis How the Other Half Lives 230: By day they loaf in the corner-groggeries.
1898		(con. 1875) F.T. Bullen Cruise of the ‘Cachalot’ 162: There was a native town and a couple of low groggeries [...] where some of my shipmates promptly invested a portion of their wealth in some horrible liquor.
1903		Sun. Times (Perth) 26 July 1/2: Other read it [a newspaper story] without being awar in what particular suburb [...] her groggery was located.
1908		H. Green Maison De Shine 206: Carousing in a corner groggery.
1917		‘A-No. 1’ From Coast to Coast with Jack London 79: We noted that every adult patron of the groggery displayed a most horribly bloated mug.
1923		O.O. McIntyre New York Day by Day 30 Apr. [synd. col.] In the days when Nigger Mike Salter ran his Pell Street groggery.
1931		W.N. Burns One-Way Ride 63: Apparently the rich man had forgotten his days of poverty as the keeper of a Joliet groggery.
1940		H. Asbury Gangs of Chicago (2002) 53: Freddy Webster’s place, a groggery and twenty-five cent bagnio, was a dump of exceptional viciousness.
1968		(con. mid-19C) S. Longstreet Wilder Shore 111: Dance halls, brothels, pawnshops, groggeries, saloon made up the coast.
1984		R. Wilder Jr You All Spoken Here 179: An unidentified parson in a combination grocery and groggery in Louisiana.