Wood, wood up

To take in wood, especially on a river steamboat.

1829.  The place where we made fast was a wooding station, owned by what is called a Squatter, a person who, without any title to the land, or leave asked or granted, squats himself down and declares himself the lord and master of the soil for the time being. There is nobody to question his right, and, indeed, according to all accounts, it might not be altogether a safe topic of conversation to introduce.—Basil Hall, ‘Travels in North America,’ iii. 354.

1833.  Next morning we stopped to wood, a little below New Madrid.—J. K. Paulding, ‘The Banks of the Ohio,’ i. 217 (Lond.).

1838.  The boat had just “wooded,” and was nobly breasting the current of the river at the rate of eight knots an hour.—B. Drake, ‘Tales and Sketches,’ p. 28–9.

1839.  When we stopped in the afternoon to “wood,” we were gratified by a sight of an enormous catfish of this river and the Mississippi, weighing full sixty pounds.—J. K. Townsend, ‘Narrative,’ p. 21 (Phila.).

1850.  Richard, seeing that the demonstration was only a merry one, very quietly went to wooding up the stove.—S. Judd, ‘Richard Edney,’ p. 52.

1850.  

1852.  [They said] that we had stopped on the [Newfoundland] banks to wood.—S. S. Cox, ‘A Buckeye Abroad,’ p. 436. (Italics in the original.)

1861.  The owner of this establishment, a stout negro, was busily engaged with others in “wooding up” the engine from the pile of cut timber by the roadside.—W. H. Russell, ‘My Diary, North and South,’ April 15.

1875.  The officer of the watch will tell you when he wants to wood up.—Mark Twain, ‘Old Times on the Mississippi,’ Atlantic Monthly, xxxv. p. 288/1 (March).

1888.  The steamer bumped into the shore anywhere it happened to be wooded, and an army of negroes appeared, running over the gang-plank like ants.—Mrs. Custer, ‘Tenting on the Plains,’ p. 51.