A person settling on land without legal title. Under acts of Congress, bona fide squatters on Western lands became Pre-emptors.
1809. This unceremonious mode of taking possession of new land was technically termed squatting, and hence is derived the appellation of squatters; a name odious in the ears of all great landholders, and which is given to those enterprising worthies, who seize upon land first, and take their chance to make good their title to it afterwards.—W. Irving, ‘A History of New-York,’ i. 188 (1812). (Italics in the original.)
1810. If the nation were put to action against every Squatter, for the recovery of their lands, we should only have law suits, no lands for sale.—Thomas Jefferson, ‘The Batture at New Orleans’: Works, viii. 588 (1859).
1810. The squatters of New Hampshire have been busy again.—The Repertory, Boston, Oct. 2: from the Baltimore American.
1814. Never had any legal title whatever, but were a set of arrant squatters, that settled just where it suited them, without asking leave of any living soul, except the Indians, with whom, as is usual with white people, they made excellent bargains.—Analectic Mag., iv. 53 (Phila.).
1821. A Squatter is a person, who plants himself in the wilderness upon any piece of ground which he likes, without purchasing it of the proprietor. Large tracts of the country, recently settled in these States, have been occupied in this manner.—T. Dwight, ‘Travels,’ ii. 221.
1825. They had been “smoking out a squatter;”—i. e. a person, who had “squatted” himself down, upon the vacant land, which was then a matter of dispute, between two or three of the northern states.—John Neal, ‘Brother Jonathan,’ i. 219.
1829. See WOOD, WOOD UP.
1830. The down east sea monster, that ‘monstrum horridum,’ that furnished abundant food for wonder and conjecture to all squatters between Portland pier and ’Quoddy, inclusive, some two years ago.—N. Ames, ‘A Mariner’s Sketches,’ p. 42. (Italics in the original.)
1836. Mr. Clay disclaimed any intentional disrespect to squatters, but hardly thought they would have saved the Capitol unless they had given up the habit of squatting.—U.S. Senate, March 31: Cong. Globe, p. 217, App.
1836. The gentleman was more comprehensive than he (Mr. King of Georgia) was, in his application of the term squatters, for he applied it to the first settlers of Jamestown, to the pilgrims, and even to Columbus; and he said it was the squatters who saved New Orleans, and would have conquered at Bladensburg, had they been there.—The same, June 9: id., p. 432.
1838. Individuals of that singular class termed “Squatters;” those hardy pioneers who formed the earliest American settlements along our western frontier.—E. Flagg, ‘The Far West,’ ii. 206 (N.Y.).
1840. If there is one class of citizens among the people of the West, more honest and patriotic than their neighbors, they are the hardy squatters.—Mr. Davis of Indiana, House of Repr., April 30: Cong. Globe, p. 443, App.
1852. We will fill up these mountains, take up the land, and, as they used to say in the States, “become squatters,” and we will become thicker on the mountains than the crickets ever were.—H. C. Kimball at the Mormon Tabernacle, Oct. 7: ‘Journal of Discourses,’ i. 296.
1857. Until 1855, the settlers were usually termed squatters by the San Francisco papers.—See San Francisco Call, April 2.
