One big elephant in the room is the race and ethnicity angle to squatting.
The Shanty Irish get all the attention it seems, probably because of their high profile in New York City. The Irish presence is so dominant in setting the template of urban squattering that it is virtually a precondition that the Irish be there first to establish a colony before anyone else.
One good example is Chicago's Swedetown. According to the canonical history of Swedes in Chicago, by the 1860s there was an Irish shantytown west of the river that accepted some Swedish residents. In the wake of the Great Fire of 1871 the Swedish colony migrated north to Goose Island, while the Irish headed south to the Union Stockyards having passed on the vital lessons of shanty living to their former neighbors.
Examples of the odd German colony, or Norwegians down in Minneapolis' Bohemian Flats, or Brooklyn's Red Hook, always seem to find that the Irish were there first.
So this is why Crow Hill gets my attention. Like many shantytowns it has several names that also refer to nearby communities (Carrville, Weeksville), but one name stands out: Blackville. The origins of Crow Hill, just like the boundaries, are blurry, but the area was an established free-black settlement long before the Civil War. Like most shantytowns not every resident of Crow Hill was a squatter, but this is an example of a recognizably ethnic squatter colony arising independent of an Irish seed.
Another topic to cover.
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