The Washington Elm

Taken from the Bay State Monthly (1884).

On-line at:http://etcetera.topcities.com/trees/dame1.htm

AT THE NORTH end of the Common in Old Cambridge stands the famous Washington Elm, which has been oftener visited, measured, sketched, and written up for the press, than any other tree in America. It is of goodly proportions, but, as far as girth of trunk and spread of branches constitute the claim upon our respect, there are many nobler specimens of the American elm in historic Middlesex.

Extravagant claims have been made with regard to its age, but it is extremely improbable that any tree of this species has ever rounded out its third century. Under favorable conditions, the growth of the elm is very rapid, a single century sometimes sufficing to develop a tree larger than the Washington Elm.

When Governor Winthrop and Lieutenant-Governor Dudley, in 1630, rode along the banks of the Charles in quest of a suitable site for the capital of their colony, it is barely possible the great elm was in being. It would be a pleasant conceit to link the thrifty growth of the young sapling with the steady advancement of the new settlement, enshrining it as a sort of guardian genius of the place, the living witness of progress in Cambridge from the first feeble beginnings.

The life of the tree, however, probably does not date farther back than the last quarter of the seventeenth century. In its early history there was nothing to distinguish it from its peers of the greenwood. When the surrounding forest fell beneath the axe of the woodman, the trees conspicuous for size and beauty escaped the general destruction; among these was the Washington Elm; but there is no evidence that it surpassed its companions.

Tradition states that another large elm once stood on the northwest corner of the Common, under which the Reverend George Whitefield, the Wesleyan evangelist, preached in 1745. Others claim that it was the Washington Elm under which the sermon was delivered. The two trees stood near each other, and the hearers were doubtless scattered under each. But the great elm was destined to look down upon scenes that stirred the blood even more than the vivid eloquence of a Whitefield. Troublous times had come, and the mutterings of discontent were voicing themselves in more and more articulate phrase. The old tree must have been privy to a great deal of treasonable talk at first, whispered with many misgivings, under the cover of darkness; later, in broad daylight, fearlessly spoken aloud. The smoke of bonfires, in which blazed the futile proclamations of the King, was wafted through its branches. It saw the hasty burial, by night, of the Cambridge men who were slain upon the nineteenth of April, 1775; it saw the straggling arrival of the beaten, but not disheartened, survivors of Bunker Hill; it saw the Common granted to the town as a training-field suddenly transformed to a camp, under General Artemas Ward, commander - in - chief of the Massachusetts troops.

The crowning glory in the life of the great elm was at hand. On the twenty- first of June, Washington, without allowing himself time to take leave of his family, set out on horseback from Philadelphia, arriving at Cambridge on the second of July. Sprightly Dorothy Dudley in her Journal describes the exercises of the third, with the florid eloquence of youth.

"To-day, he (Washington) formally took command, under one of the grand old elms on the Common. It was a magnificent sight. The majestic figure of the General, mounted upon his horse beneath the wide-spreading branches of the patriarch tree; the multitude thronging the plain around, and the houses filled with interested spectators of the scene, while the air rung with shouts of enthusiastic welcome, as he drew his sword, and thus declared himself Commander-in-chief of the Continental army."

Dorothy does not specify under which elm Washington stood. It is safely inferable from her language that our tree was one of several noble elms which at this time were standing upon the Common. Although no contemporaneous pen seems to have pointed out the exact tree beyond all question, happily the day is not so far distant from us that oral testimony is inadmissible. Of this there is enough to satisfy the most captious critic.

Where the stone church is now situated, there was formerly an old gambrel-roofed house, in which the Moore family lived during the Revolution. The situation was very favorable for observation, commanding the highroad from Watertown to Cambridge Com- mon, and directly opposite the great elm. From the windows of this house the spectators saw the ceremcmny to good advantage, and one of them, styled, in 1848, "the venerable Mrs. Moore, lived to point out the tree, and describe the glories of the occasion, seventy-five years afterward. Fathers, who were eyewitnesses standing be- neath this tree, have told the story to their sons, and those sons have not yet passed away. There is no possibility that we are paying our vows at a counterfeit shrine.

Great events which mark epochs in history, bestow an imperishable dignity even upon the meanest objects with which they are associated. When Washington drew his sword heneath the branches, the great elm, thus distinguished above its fellows, passed at once into history, henceforward to be known as the Washington Elm.

``Under the brave old tree
Our fathers gathered in arms, and swore
They would follow the sign their banners bore,
And fight till the land was free. -- Holmes.

The elm was often honored by the presence of Washington, who, it is said, had a platform built among the branches, where, we may suppose, he used to ponder over the plans of the campaign. The Continental army, born within the shade of the old tree, overflowing the Common, converted Cambridge into a fortified camp. Here, too, the flag of thirteen stripes for the first time swung to the breeze.

These were the palmy days of the elm. When the tide of war set away from New England, the Washington Elm fell into unmerited neglect. The struggling patriots had no time for sentiment; and when the war came to an end they were too busy in shaping the conduct of the government, and in repairing their shattered fortunes, to pay much attention to trees. It was not until the great actors in those days were rapidly passing away, that their descendants turned with an affectionate regard to the enduring monuments inseparably associated with the fathers. Among these, the Washington Elm deservedly holds a high rank.

On the third of July, 1875, the citizens of Cambridge celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of Washington's assuming the command of the army. The old tree was the central figure of the occasion. The American flag floated above the topmost branches, and a profusion of smaller flags waved amid the foliage. Never tree received a more enthusiastic ovation.

It is enclosed by a circular iron fence erected by the Reverend Daniel Austin. Outside the fence, but under the branches, stands a granite tablet erected by the city of Cambridge, upon which is cut an inscription written by Longfellow: --

UNDER THIS TREE
WASHINGTON
FIRST TOOK COMMAND
OP THE AMERICAN ARMY,
JULY 30, 1775.

In 1850, it still retained its graceful proportions; its great limbs were intact, and it showed few traces of age. Within the past twenty-five years, it has been gradually breaking up. In 1844, its girth, three feet from the ground, where its circumference is least, was twelve feet two and a half inches.

In 1884, at the same point, it measures fourteen feet one inch; a gain so slight that the rings of annual growth must be difficult to trace an evidence of waning vital force. The grand subdivisions of the trunk are all sadly crippled; unsightly bandages of zinc mask the progress of decay; the symptoms of approaching dissolution are painfully evident, especially in the winter season. In summer, the remaining vitality expends itself in a host of branchlets which feather the limbs, and give rise to a false impression of vigor.

Never has tree been cherished with greater care, but its days are numbered. A few years more or less, and, like Penns Treaty Elm and the famous Charter Oak, it will be numbered with the things that were.

By L. L. DAME. Historic Trees: The Washington Elm; The Eliot Oak. [The Bay State monthly. / Volume 1, Issue 2, Feb., 1884]