Meaning:
To move home. Sometimes also given as `pull up sticks'.
Background:
The first thing that the English settlers to America did after landing in
Jamestown in 1607 was to set about building a palisade to protect the
settlement. In less than a month they had erected a triangular wooden fort,
bounded by a palisade of wooden stakes.
The habit was continued by the Pilgrim Fathers who constructed a similar
palisade around their settlement in Plymouth, Massachusetts. This is recorded
in a letter by John Pory to the Earl of Southampton, in 1623:
"Now concerning the quality of the people ... their industry as well
appeareth by their building, as by a substantial palisado about their
[town]."
The fear of attack by native Americans or, where there was no such fear, the
need to mark a boundary, caused all early dwellings to be surrounded by
paling fences. Gathering the timber and building the fences involved
significant effort and if settlers later decided to move they would take
their palisade with them. This was a well-enough established practice by 1640
for the phrase `pull up stakes' to have been used figuratively to mean `move
house'. That is shown in this example, from a 1640 letter by a Thomas
Lechford, who was planning a move from New England:
"I am loth to hear of a stay, but am plucking up stakes with as much speed
as I may."
The setting out and pulling up of stakes continued in a literal sense into
the 18th century.
...
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
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Raising and trundling off palisades might be back-breaking work, but at least
the early settlers didn't have to apply, kowtow, or otherwise kiss anybody's ass
to move home. Until hukou, the Chinese seemed to have the same freedom. A great
uncle, I was told, pulled up stakes in the 1930s, headed north, and settled in
Manchuria. I never met him but nowadays, I wouldn't mind following his fabled
example. Only my north would be Canada.
