where did the expression, "how are things in your neck of the woods" orginate?

Answer 1

.... "In the country, there aren't any street addresses. So you literally use landmarks to refer to where a person lives. Up in your neck of the woods or up the holler. On the mountain. Down on the river."

... ""Neck" had been used in English since around 1555 to describe a narrow strip of land, usually surrounded by water, based on its resemblance to the neck of an animal. But the Americans were the first to apply "neck" to a narrow stand of woods or, more importantly, to a settlement located in a particular part of the woods. In a country then largely covered by forests, your "neck of the woods" was your home, the first American neighborhood"

For more:
http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/7/messages/671.html

Answer 2

This is an excerpt from this website: http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19991129

"Sometime in the first half of the 19th century, people started referring to the settlements in remote wooded areas as a particular neck of the woods. The first print evidence of the expression is in 1839: "In this neck of the woods" (Sprit of Times 15 June 175/2, 1839).

In a book of Americanisms, De Vere writes about the American pioneer: "He will. . .find his neighborhood designated as a neck of the woods, that being the name applied to any settlement made in the well-wooded parts of the South-west especially" (Americanisms: The English of the New World, 1871). "