Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US, also gauber-grubber, goober-grabbler, gouber-grabbler, gruber-grubber) an inhabitant of North Carolina, Arkansas or Georgia.

1865		in B.L. Ridley Battles and Sketches of the Army of Tennessee (1906) 460: The North Carolinians are called ‘Tar Heels;’ Georgians, ‘Goober Grabblers’.
1869		‘South-Western Sl.’ in Overland Monthly (CA) Aug. 129: A Georgian is popularly known in the South as a ‘Gouber-grabbler’ [‘gouber‘ for gopher, peanut – a nut which is exceedingly abundant in that State].
1877		Bartlett Dict. Americanisms (4th edn) 253: Goober-Grabbers. In Georgia and Alabama, backwoods people.
1880		Harper’s Mag. Feb. 388/2: ‘What are gruber-grubbers?’ ‘Why pea-nut diggers — worst lot you ever saw’ [DA].
1922		C.E. Belknap Yesterdays of Grand Rapids 27: One needed the appetite of a Georgia goober-grabber to share in his hospitality.
1946		C. McWilliams Southern Calif. Country 172: Georgians are ‘crackers’ and ‘gauber grubbers’ [DA].
1949		Mencken ‘Some Opprobrious Nicknames’ in AS XXIV:1 29: Goober-grabber [...] for a Georgian.
1985		G. Courter River of Dreams 77: Her father would only refer to him as ‘that damned goober-grabber,’ a slur on his Georgia farming background.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 14: Agricultural labourers and small farmers — i.e., apple-knockers, clodhoppers, goober grabbers, nesters, peasants, rednecks.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1992

P.J. O’Rourke Give War a Chance (2003) 58: [...] still talking in that prissy, nose-first, goober-grabber accent, except this time in Spanish.