A small wooden house or room.
1820. [These people] lived in what is here called a Shanty. This is a hovel of about ten feet by eight, made somewhat in the form of an ordinary cow-house, having but an half roof, or roof on one side.—Zerah Hawley, ‘Tour’ [of Ohio, &c.], New Haven, 1822, p. 31. (See also p. 55.) (Italics in the original.)
1822. Almost every vacant spot has been occupied by a shop or shanty of some kind.—Boston Patriot, Sept. 7.
1836. When we entered the shantee, Job was busy dealing out his rum in a style that showed he was making a good day’s work of it, and I called for a quart of the best, but the crooked critur returned no other answer than by pointing at a board over the bar, on which he had chalked in large letters, “Pay to-day and trust to-morrow.”—‘Col. Crockett in Texas,’ p. 17 (Phila.).
1836. I noticed many a centaur of a fellow force his skeary nag up to the opening in the little clapboard shanty.—W. T. Porter, ed., ‘A Quarter Race in Kentucky,’ etc., p. 14 (1846).
1839. “Negroes wanted.—The contractors upon the Brunswick and Alatamaha Canal, are desirous to hire a number of Prime Negro Men, from the 1st October next, for fifteen months, until the 1st January, 1840…. These negroes will be employed in the excavation of the canal. They will be provided with three and a half pounds of pork, or bacon, and ten quarts of gourd-seed corn per week, lodged in comfortable shantees, and attended constantly by a skilful physician.”—J. S. Buckingham, ‘Slave States,’ i. 137 (1842).
1840. These numerous ‘shanties,’ which you see sprinkled over the hills, lonely or in groups, are the homes of the miners.—Knick. Mag., xv. 502 (June).
1844. The whole gang were conveyed to the Mayor’s office, a small shantee, with one large window and door, in which was seated that functionary upon a high stool, that he might have a more commanding view of the litigant parties.—Watmough, ‘Scribblings and Sketches,’ p. 179.
1846. A low kind of shantee projected from the door several feet back, which served for pantry, milk-house, pig-pen, poultry-house, and possibly stable in winter.—E. W. Farnham, ‘Life in Prairie Land,’ p. 64.
1847. A boy of about sixteen, lying on some straw at the mouth of the shantee.—D. P. Thompson,’ Locke Amsden,’ p. 12 (Boston).
1849. They came down in their villanous demands, barely in time to save their shantee from a come down on their heads.—Theodore T. Johnson, ‘Sights in the Gold Region,’ p. 17 (N.Y.).
