"Trick-or-treating" is a relatively recent compromise between pranksters on one side and gun-wielding property owners on the other. Newspapers from the late 19th & early 20th centuries are filled with stories of horrible Halloween violence. Here's a thread: 1/15 
Observances of Halloween or Hallowe'en or All Hallow's Eve, the night before the Feast of All Saints came to the US with Scottish and Irish immigrants from remnants of the Celtic festival of Samhain. The earliest newspaper reference I found was from Wilmington, DE in 1823. 2/
In that article, the author assumes the reader is not familiar with the holiday, but explains that Halloween was a night when the spirits might reveal future loves. Thus Halloween often featured parties with young men and women and also truly terrifying carved turnips. 3/
Halloween was also associated with guising (wearing masks or costumes and going door to door) and also petty vandalism that could be blamed on spirits and gobblins (fences knocked down, street signs switched, etc.) 4/
As the holiday became more popular in the US in the 2nd half of the 19th-century it became associated with violence. In Johnstown, PA, in 1867 a man fired into a crowd boys celebrating Halloween. 5/
In 1886 a student at Ann Arbor on Halloween threw a stranger over a fence. The victim drew a pistol and made the student "beg for his life." The next year a paper in Cheboygan wrote that "everybody should get a gun between now and next Oct. 31" to prevent "ruffianly conduct." 6/
Newspapers ran stories of Halloween tragedies and pranks gone wrong each year. In just this one from Topeka in 1916 a 7 year-old girl was struck by a car and a 16 year-old electrocuted by a lamppost. 7 children were bitten by a possibly rabid dog! 7/
But most common were stories of men, usually farmers, shooting and killing children who trespassed on their property. These examples all come from Chronicling America and there are many more. (chroniclingamerica.loc.gov) 8/
This continued in the 1900s and into the 1910s. In these a Chinese man in Arizona shoots a man who tripped him with piano wire, a woman shoots a 15yo at a grocery store, and a farmer shoots a banker's daughter, a 2 men in Ohio were shot while attempting to blow up an outhouse. 9/
In this case again in Ann Arbor a man who shot into a crowd of boys after they rattled his fence on Halloween took poison out of guilt and died by suicide the next day. 10/
There are dozens of examples of Halloween murders in these decades across the country and many more stories of pranks gone wrong. This one is from the Bismarck Tribune in 1934. 11/
The earliest references to "trick-or-treat" in Chronicling America comes from the Evening Star in Washington, DC, in 1946. In it the chief of police describes boys who indulge in "trick-or-treat," demanding cookies "with the alternative of losing their gate" as extortion. 12/
That year, when a man in DC struck a 12 year-old girl who knocked at his door with a "trick or treat ultimatum," a municipal judge freed him of the assault charge since he was "merely trying to protect his property from trespassers." 13/
The next year, Halloween 1947, a columnist in the DC Evening Star resigned his readers to the idea that a "small fry" might try to collect a "ransom of cakes or candies." He warned home owners to take the threat seriously and stressed to children importance of "FAIR PLAY." 14/
Of course after trick-or-treating led to a truce between children and gun-wielding property owners, parents had new worries. In this case from 1951, a Florida woman burned nine children by giving out coins she had heated in a pan. What a weird holiday. Happy Halloween! 15/15
A Halloween bonus. The NYT first mentions "trick-or-treating" in this article in 1950 calling for "Halloween Fun Without the Deviltry." Halloween had gotten so bad the Senate Judiciary Committee considered naming Oct. 31 "National Youth Honor Day" timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1…
"Trick or Treat" was not yet universal. In 1952 the principal of a high school in Brooklyn slapped a 10 year-old trick-or-treater after he continued to press for a treat even after he gave boys a 5-minute lecture on "the unworthiness of Halloween begging." timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1…
