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log rolling noun In former times, a community work activity to help a family clear land by felling and trimming trees and then rolling the logs away to be piled and burned or otherwise disposed of, permitting a house to be constructed and cultivation to be begun. The family often treated neighbors to a meal and entertained after the work was completed. [DARE labels this term “chiefly South, South Midland”]

1824 (in 1912 Doddridge Notes on Settlement 88) The standard dish, for every log rolling, house raising and harvest day, is a pot pie, or what in other countries is called a sea pie. 1889 Phelan History of TN 28 In some localities more thickly settled than others, neighbors render each other mutual assistance. In this case, the trunks of very large trees were cut down, chopped into logs, rolled together, and set on fire. Hence the phrase log-rolling in the vocabulary of our political common-places. 1924 Abernethy Moonshine 132 They never went anywhere; that is to say, the women went wherever there was a “quiltin’” or birth in the neighborhood; the men went to “corn-shuckin’s,” “log-rollin’s,” and, on every fifth Sunday, to the meetin’-house. 1956 Hall Coll (Cades Cove TN) They used to have log rollin’s. They'd gather up crowds ... They'd have new ground, roll the logs together, and burn 'em. People would help another out. But that’s a thing of the past now. 1972 Graham County 50 The girdling process of clearing land was slow; therefore, many pioneers preferred to cut down the trees immediately. The trees were then trimmed and cut into convenient lengths for handling. When time for the piling of the logs arrived, a farmer announced a “log rolling.” All the neighbors would arrive early with hand spikes to help pile the logs in great heaps for burning. The “log rolling” was a cooperative enterprise in which everyone participated ungrudgingly without charge. The occasion was not only helpful as a source of labor supply but also a time of great merriment for the entire community. a1975 Lunsford It Used to Be 21 Now, people going to marry or have married and need to have a few more quilts and things of that kind, why, they'll make up a lot of quilt tops and give a quiltin’. Of course, that’s a lot of fun, and often they give a quiltin’ at the same time they have a log rollin’ or something of that kind,—a working, a house-raising.