To hew wood into rails, very roughly.
1677. They were … commanded to goe to work, fall trees, and mawl and toat railes.—Virginia Mag., ii. 168 (1894).
1686. Richard Johnson, Mulatto, doth by these presents forthwith impower you in my name to confess a judgment unto John Cole to fall, mall, and set up for John Cole upon his plantation where he shall appoint 400 panels of sufficient post and rails, every pannell ten foot distance and five rails of pine to every pannell, and every post to be seven foot and half, one foot and a half in ye ground, the said post to be all of chestnut and whiteoak.—P. A. Bruce, ‘Economic History of Virginia’ (1896), i. 318 n. (N.E.D.)
1776. Mrs. Slocumb took entire charge of the farm, and she used to say that she did as much and all the work a man ever did, except “mauling rails,” and to do that exception away, she went out “one day and split a few.”—John H. Wheeler, ‘Historical Sketches of North Carolina,’ ii. 457 (Phila., 1851).
1843. A dollar a day, which was more nor double what a feller got for mauling rails!—B. R. Hall (‘Robert Carlton’), ‘The New Purchase,’ ii. 80.
1848. Among the labors of the latter three years of my country life, was that of mauling rails.… A green blue-ash was my choice, for it was easy to chop and easy to split; but I often had to encounter a dead honey-locust in the field, which was a very different affair.—Dr. D. Drake, ‘Pioneer Life in Kentucky,’ p. 69 (Cincinn., 1870).
1849. Many an honest, hardworking man has mauled rails for 50 cents a hundred, that he might be able to get a little coffee, or tea, or sugar for a sick wife or child.—Mr. Sawyer of Ohio, House of Repr., Jan. 10: Cong. Globe, p. 81, App.
1851. He put off in the “hollows” to see a man that was owing him a bill of some size, and finding him in the woods mauling rails, all in a crowd by himself, he told him if he would go and help us, he would credit his account for five dollars.—M. L. Byrn, ‘An Arkansaw Doctor,’ p. 40.
1856. I always have two hundred rails mauled in a day.—Olmsted, ‘Slave States,’ p. 207. (N.E.D.)
1860. The judge’s style as a stumper is of a heavy, log-mauling kind.—Oregon Argus, March 17.
