USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Topographical and historical description of Boston > Part 26
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brance of the ex-mayor who planted the quivering-leaved trees beside it? and why not give the name of Quincy Path to the walk leading from the corner of Park and Beacon streets to West street, in honor of the venerable man who during the early years of his mayoralty did so much to improve the Common?
All the walks in the enclosure of the Common have had trees set out at their edges since the adoption of the city charter, it being the pride of the committees of each year to do something to beautify and adorn this favorite holiday resort of the citizens.
In 1830, about the time of the bicentennial celebration of the naming of the town, it was proposed, by persons who certainly could not have had much reverence for the past, to change the name of the Common and malls to "Washington Park." This endeavor, however, did not meet with public favor; and the old name, homely per- haps, but sufficiently good, has continued in use until the present day. May it never be recorded in our city annals, that such a folly as that then contemplated has been perpetrated; for it is sufficiently discreditable to Boston that the names of many streets, which once were the record of the munificence of the honored dead, have been unwittingly changed to gratify the vanity or please the fancy of modern innovators.
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CHAPTER XXIV.
THE OLD ELM AND OTHER TREES ON THE COMMON.
Improvements by Mayors Quincy, Lyman and Bigelow ... Trees on the Com- mon . . . Trees Named and Labelled . . . The Great Tree .. . Its Great Age .. . Its Injury in 1860 . . . Its Rivals in Pittsfield and Brookline . . . Its Large Limb Used for Executions and the Hanging of Effigies . . . Phillips and Woodbridge Duel in 1728 . .. Called in 1784 Liberty Tree .. . Traditions about the Age of the Great Tree . .. Its Measurements in 1825 . . . Gold Medal Awarded for a Drawing of it . . . Its Measurements in 1844, 1855, and 1860 · · · Injury in 1832 . . . Great Cavity Noticeable in 1755 . . . Probable Cause of the Apparent Diminution of the Opening . . . The Cows upon the Com- mon, and their Expulsion in 1830 . . . The Squirrels and their Disappearance ... Iron Fence Around the Tree in 1854 . . . Inscription . . . Offshoot, a Sap- ling, first appeared in 1859.
NOTWITHSTANDING the great improvements made upon the Common and mall in 1784, by Mr. Oliver Smith and others, ample room was left to their successors for con- tinuing on in the good work. When Boston became a city, the responsibility of looking after this great holiday resort of its citizens fell to the mayor and aldermen, and they appear to have been ever mindful of the great trust committed to them. Mayor Phillips, perhaps, had as much as he could do during the year he held office - the first after the adoption of the city charter-in or- ganizing the new government and putting its wheels in motion, without spending his energies upon the Com- mon, which had already, and quite recently, received so much attention from the townsmen and their public servants, the Selectmen. He, indeed, dwelt beside the
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enclosure, at the corner of Walnut street; but the con- tiguity of his residence to such a beautiful spot did not draw his attention from what, during his short adminis- tration, was of more consequence to the citizens, and which required the earliest care of those who were de- termined that the establishment of Boston as a city should not prove a failure, as was too frequently at that time predicted, and by very many desired; for, as it will be remembered, the new charter was accepted by only a majority of nine hundred and sixteen votes out of four thousand six hundred and seventy-eight cast, and many of the opponents of the project did not vote.
When the senior Quincy entered upon office, he brought with him a great energy of character, which has not been surpassed by any of his successors. It was his lot, also, to have a habitation near the Common; for he dwelt at the corner of Hamilton Place, and from his windows could see the mutilated buttonwoods, and the unsightly poplars, which so soon after his entering upon office fell victims to his good taste, and were sup- planted by the stately elms in Park street mall. Mr. Quincy did not confine his labors to the part of the Common in his immediate neighborhood, but laid out the Charles street mall, and set out many of the trees beside the paths, as did also his successor, Mr. Otis, whose stately residence in Beacon street also faced the same. Other mayors in their time, especially Messrs. Lyman and Bigelow, looked out well for the trees. Mr. Lyman set out the magnificent rows which border the path that bears his name; and Mr. Bigelow, besides setting out the aspens, the solitary oaks, and the much abused arbor vitæ hedge on the music hill, absolutely saved from destruction a large portion of the trees in
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DESCRIPTION OF BOSTON.
the old mall, which were about to die in consequence of the great mass of hard Medford gravel that excluded moisture from their roots, which some of the early mayors, in their mistaken ideas of what the public good required, had heaped upon the mall to take the place of the soft green, natural carpet, over which so many times the towns people of earlier days had prom- enaded, and which the boys of the town had generally occupied as a playground. It may almost seem incredi- ble, but it is true, that Mayor Bigelow, in his first year of office, removed from the malls more than six thou- sand cartloads of the disintegrated and decayed granite and of the smothering hard coal ashes, with which his predecessors had put back the growth of the trees very many years, and had absolutely killed a large number. One alone of the buttonwoods now remains to give ocular proof that trees of that species were once in- mates of the mall.
Under the immediate superintendence of Mr. Sher- burne, the city forester, Mayor Bigelow caused several hundred trees to be set out, and the decayed trees to be pruned, and their cavities filled up and covered with cement and canvas.
There are now on the Common about 1,300 trees; of which about seven hundred are American elms, about fifty English and Scotch elms, about eighty maples of many varieties, about seventy lindens, seventeen tulip trees, ten sycamores, eight oaks, four balsam poplars or aspens, and a large variety of other trees, among which is the Gingko tree, transplanted from the garden of the late Gardiner Greene, Esq., in the year 1835, when Pem- berton Hill was taken down, and the present square bearing the same name was laid out.
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TOPOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL
Within a short time (in 1864), all the trees upon the Common have been scientifically examined by Dr. A. A. Gould, and their species ascertained; and upon some of the principal of them labels have been fastened, indi- cating their popular and scientific names, and the coun- try where they are indigenous. Besides giving the names of the trees now growing upon the Common, Dr. Gould prepared a list of other trees which should be pro- cured, and which would add to the beauty of the ground, and absolutely ascertained where such trees can be obtained. These, unquestionably, should be procured and placed in various parts of the enclosure, from time to time, until as many different specimens of shade trees shall ornament the paths, hills and valleys as can be procured, and cultivated upon the soil.
Near the centre of the Common is situated the Great Tree, formerly one of the most noted objects of the town, and now a matter of great regard with the old inhabitants, who remember it among the earliest things that attracted their attention in early youth. But it will not do to pass by this noted elm with a simple mention of its place upon the Common. It has given shelter and shade to many generations that have passed away, and has braved the storms and gales of centuries. As far back as tradition can go, it was standing in its majesty and beauty; but it has been reserved for the present generation to witness its almost entire destruction.
It is not often that an occurrence of such small importance as the destruction of a tree will cause so much sorrow and regret as did the dismemberment of the Great Tree on Boston Common, which occurred on the twenty-ninth of June, 1860, at half-past six o'clock
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DESCRIPTION OF BOSTON.
in the evening. During the afternoon the appearance of the heavens had indicated a storm of no ordinary character, and indeed it came, and few will ever forget it, for the injury it has done.
The great fall of water, together with an uncommon gust of wind, broke down the limbs of many trees throughout the city, not even sparing those of Pad- dock's mall which had then so recently escaped the threatening axe. The Great Tree, the pride of Bos- tonians, and perhaps the most noted of its kind on the continent, suffered with the others; and after standing for centuries, the oldest of the traditionary relics of the days of our forefathers was in a few moments stripped of its beauty and its magnificent proportions, to linger out a maimed and displeasing existence, the evidence only of the violence of the storm which had so muti- lated it. The amount of injury the tree sustained was great. Its beauty has been destroyed without hope of renewal; and it was the skill only of Mr. John Galvin, the city forester, that saved the part that now remains standing; he using eight cart-loads of material to fill up the cavity in the tree.
As soon as the storm abated, the rumor that "The Old Elm Tree is blown down" spread rapidly through the city, causing hundreds of citizens to go to the spot and see for themselves. To their regret, they found the rumor but too true; and very many who visited the locality of the venerated tree secured portions of the fallen limbs, to preserve among the choicest of the relics of the olden time.
Much has been said and written about this noted elm, the product of our own indigenous forests, but it has had its rivals; among which has been the far-
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famed elm of Pittsfield, remarkable for its gigantic height, and for having a trunk one hundred and fourteen feet high below its first branch; and the Aspinwall elm in Brookline, famous for its enormous and wide-spreading roots, and for the great size of its trunk. But both of these, also, have been deprived of their glory, and by storms that have passed harm- lessly by the Boston elm; and both have been taken down, and are now no longer its rivals.
Although the tree had attained a great age, and uncommon size, it was more for its beautiful proportions and graceful limbs than for age or size that it gained its notoriety with those who had paid particular atten- tion to trees; and the associations connected with its history will always keep it in remembrance. Upon its largest limb, now gone, it has been supposed that some of the early executions in the colony took place, and it is certain that during the revolutionary struggles of America this tree was one of the places of constant resort of the Sons of Liberty, who frequently caused it to be illuminated with lanterns on evenings of re- joicing and on festal occasions. It also served the purpose of exhibitions of popular feeling and indigna- tion, for many has been the tory who has been hung in effigy from its branches. Perhaps on this account it acquired the name "Liberty Tree," which it bore in 1784 (the tree originally bearing the name having been taken down), as it is designated on a map of Boston engraved that year. Very near this tree occurred, on the third of July, 1728, the duel be- tween Benjamin Woodbridge and Henry Phillips, alluded to in a previous chapter; and beneath its branches have been enacted many a scene of youthful
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DESCRIPTION OF BOSTON.
valor, in days long past, on the holidays of Election and Independence.
It would be difficult to assign to the tree even an approximate age; for, like the good old ladies so often read of, it has kept its own secret locked up closely within its own heart. It has been known, however, as far back as tradition can go, and is represented upon the oldest map of the town known to exist, and which was engraved in the year 1722, ninety-two years after the settlement of the peninsula, and then was of suf- ficient size to have attained distinction. It is reason- able to believe that it was growing before the arrival of the first colonists. A tradition has existed in the Hancock family, passed down by Mrs. Lydia Han- cock, wife of Thomas, who built the house where his nephew, the governor dwelt, that her grandfather, Hezekiah Henchman, set out the tree when he was a boy; which would have been about two hundred years ago, as his father, Daniel, the old schoolmaster, left Boston as early as 1674. Other accounts from the Henchman family give the honor to the old school- master, who wielded the sword as well as the birches, -for he commanded the famous artillery company, and served in King Philip's war in 1675. The last tradition says that the tree was set out as a shelter for the company. If this was the case, he was more provident than his successors, none of whom would have planted a tree- though as Dumbiedikes said, it would grow while men were sleeping - with such a long prospective view ahead, and in such a place as the tree has grown in. Besides, more than one hun- dred and ninety rings can easily be counted in the great branch that was broken off in 1860, and which must cer-
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tainly be several years younger than the tree itself, which alone carries back that portion of it to a period as early as the Hancock tradition can with any certainty go; and, if any reliance can be placed in traditional lore, which is extremely doubtful, we must believe that the Quakers and perhaps Ann Hibbens, the martyr of the witch de- lusion, were hung from its bough, the former in Octo- ber, 1659, and the latter in June, 1656, when it certainly must have been more than twenty-six years old, and if so was growing in 1630.
The first measurement of the great tree of which any account was made was taken in 1825, at the request of some person residing in New York. The dimensions were accurately noted on the second of April, 1825, and were as follows: Height sixty-five feet, circumference twenty-one feet eight inches at two feet six inches from the ground, and the branches extended in diameter eighty-six feet. At the time, it was said, that "this pride of our Common is pronounced by judges to be as handsome in form as it is large in size and venerable in age, and it may be worth the remark, that notwithstand- ing all the buffeting it has received from storms and hurricanes for more than a century, its original beauty and symmetry have not been impaired, although it has at times lost many of its branches." At this time a gold medal was offered for the best painted picture of it, and several were made, and in May the medal was awarded and sent to Mr. H. C. Pratt, the successful competitor.
In 1855, the tree was very accurately measured by the City Engineer, who recorded the following dimen- sions: Height, seventy-two feet six inches; girth, one foot above the ground, twenty-two feet six inches;
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DESCRIPTION OF BOSTON.
girth, four feet above the ground, seventeen feet; aver- age diameter of greatest extent of branches, one hun- dred and one feet. Other earlier measurements, by George B. Emerson, Esq., and Prof. Asa Gray, in 1844, show that the tree had not ceased to grow as long as it stood. The latest measurement, taken by the writer a few months before its mutilation, gave twenty-four feet girth at the ground, eighteen feet three inches at three feet, and sixteen feet six inches at five feet, showing an increase of only about five inches in girth in sixteen years.
The storm of 1860, which so mutilated the tree, was not the only storm which injured its great branches. In the summer of 1832 it was much injured by the vio- lence of a storm, and its largest limbs were so much cleft asunder as to allow them to rest their branches upon the ground; but they were subsequently, at much cost and labor, restored to their former position, and were sustained in place by iron bolts and braces. By the gale of September, 1869, a large limb, measuring forty-two inches in circumference, was torn from this tree, thus gradually destroying its original beautiful proportions.
Many of the older inhabitants can well remember when there was a cavity in its trunk sufficiently large to allow boys to secrete themselves within it. This was very noticeable in 1755, when a picture was made of it in needlework; but this has almost entirely disap- peared, being partially closed up by the good treatment and care which have been given to the tree, and partly from the raising of the soil at its roots. This opening was on the northwest side, and there is also a smaller one, now apparent, on the westerly side.
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When the cows were tenants of the Common, having acquired the right of pasturage by a vote of the towns- men, passed in May, 1660, empowering the Selectmen "to order the improvement and feeding of their com- mon by such cattle as they shall deem meet," they were accustomed to shelter themselves beneath the wide spreading branches of the Great Tree from the burn- ing sun, and to cool their heated hoofs in the damp marshy ground around its prominent and far stretch- ing roots. Consequently the immediate proximity to the trunk of the tree was extremely muddy, and not fit to be a proper place for promenade and shelter in inclement weather for the pedestrians. Many attempts were made, in vain, to expel the quadrupeds from their old haunts, which the right of eminent-domain, and the annual tax of two dollars, had for many years secured to them; but they kept their place, and enjoyed their rights and liberties. The new state of things, when Boston became a city by an act of the legislature, signed by Gov. Brooks, on the twenty-third of Feb- ruary, 1822, adopted by the townsmen on the fourth of March of the same year, and announced by the procla- mation of the governor on the seventh day of the same month, completely subjected the poor beasts, as well as their owners, to the mercies of a new regime. The gentle Phillips, the first mayor, who was elected to office on the sixteenth of April, 1822, and inaugurated on the first of May, being as much a lover of true liberty as his gifted son, let the creatures alone during his twelve months of service in the curule chair; and it was not until the iron will of his successor, Judge Quincy, who was transferred from the bench of the Municipal Court to the Municipal Chair, raised the price of pas-
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DESCRIPTION OF BOSTON.
turage from two dollars to ten, that a visible change was made in the quality and quantity of stragglers upon the Common. It remained, however, for the third mayor, Hon. Mr. Otis, noted for his politeness and winning ways, to remove the trouble, as it was considered by those who were wont to perambulate the numerous by- paths and byways of the old common land, or cow com- mons, as it might have been called in the days of our forefathers. On the tenth of May, 1830, the order was passed that banished the four-legged gentry from their green pasture, and shady retreat under the old elm. Consequent to this came the raising up of the ground- level around the foot of the tree, and the conversion of the marshy soil into dry land. Heaps of material were thrown upon the widely extending roots, and the damp places were made dry; and with these changes the hole in the tree almost disappeared, and very nearly the old tree, our ancient friend, came to terminating its vegeta- tive existence; for its growth was checked, and its once luxuriant foliage began to wilt, and exhibit unequivocal signs of death. The subsequent removal from the tree of this ungenial mass of debris, which had been placed around its roots, made room for the good soil which replaced the poor stuff, and again the Great Tree began to show its pristine vigor; and the filling up of the low places between the great roots, together with the heal- ing process of nature, diminished the apparent size of the great hole in the trunk, which had so often been the hiding-place of boys, in their sports and pastimes.
In the summer of 1854, Mayor Smith - he who in- troduced the squirrels that drove away the birds and afterwards disappeared during the winter of 1864- paid considerable attention to the Old Tree. He had
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DESCRIPTION OF BOSTON.
it pruned and cared for, and placed around it an octa- gonal iron fence, which bears upon an oval tablet secured to the gate the following inscription:
THE OLD ELM.
THIS TREE HAS BEEN STANDING
FOR AN UNKNOWN
HERE PERIOD. IT IS BELIEVED TO HAVE EXISTED BEFORE THE SETTLEMENT OF BOSTON,
BEING FULL GROWN IN 1722, EXHIB- ITED MARKS OF OLD AGE IN 1792, AND
WAS NEARLY DESTROYED BY A STORM IN 1832. PROTECTED BY AN IRON ENCLOSURE IN 1854. J. V. C. SMITH, MAYOR.
When the Great Tree was measured in the spring of 1860. an offshoot was discovered, which had recently, in 1859, started from one of the roots on the westerly side of the main tree. This shoot is still alive, measuring over twelve feet in height, and about thirteen inches in circumference a short distance above the ground, and appears to have received due attention from those who have since that time had charge of the Common. Just where it emerges from the soil, there is a consid- erable cavity in the old tree; and it would not be surprising if the young tree, vampire-like, were to grow and flourish on the life-sap of its parent; and if care is continued to be given to it, it may hereafter succeed its parent and become as noted in coming centuries as has its distinguished progenitor.
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CHAPTER XXV.
TOPOGRAPHY OF THE COMMON. - EXECUTIONS.
The Training Field . . . The New Parade Ground . . . Ropewalks . . . Charles Street Laid Out . . . Light Horse and Boston Cavalry . .. Hills on the Com- mon . . . Powder House Hill . . . Old Windmill . . . Fortifications . . . Old Block House Burnt . . . Fox Hill and Old Windmill . . . Marsh . . . Ridge Hill . .. Washington Hill and Smokers' and Music Circles . . . Bigelow's Evergreens .. . Ponds . . . Frog Pond ... Shehan's Pond, and Shehan's Execution in 1787 . .. Cow Pond, or Horse Pond . . . Wishing Stone . . . Moll Pitcher . . . Fortifications and Barracks of the British during the Siege . . . Measurements of the Common in 1851 . . . Executions on the Common . . . Petitions against Hanging Tulley on the Common Granted . .. Public Executions Terminated in 1826.
IN the olden time the whole of the Common was used as a training field, and on the annual muster day it presented a lively scene; for all the trainbands of the county were there, and nearly all of the towns-people also. On this occasion, and more especially on the more noted holidays, it was well lined with booths and tents for the sale of a great variety of eatables as well as drinkables, the peculiar designations of many of which have disappeared from use, and have become almost forgotten, except when some one of the old school ventures to speak of them. The line on muster days was formed a short distance west of the inner wooden fence of the Tremont street mall, and usually extended from Park street to the Central Burying- Ground, there being then no trees to interfere with
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the military movements. In those days the sham-fights, which took place in the afternoon, succeeded the morn- ing review, and were performed near Charles street, on the site of the present parade ground. The part of the Common near Charles street was, until quite recently, a damp place, and was known to our fathers as "the marsh at the bottom of the Common." While Hon. Thomas P. Rich was chairman of the committee on the Common and malls, not many years ago, this marsh was laid out for its present purposes, preceding committees having done much to fill up the hollow places with oyster shells, coal ashes, and the dry dirt collected from house to house in the city carts. Indeed, in the last days of the town government, the scavengers used to bury the swill, which they took from the tenements, in holes dug for the purpose in this part of the Common, and continued this unhealthy practice until the estab- lishment of the great piggery at the old House of Industry, at South Boston Point.
Until the first of September, 1794, the Common on the west extended to the water of the Back Bay, the town on that day having voted to Isaac Davis and others a portion of the land west of the present Charles street, for the erection of six ropewalks. Within two years of this date, a sea-wall was built from Beacon street to Boylston street, and six ropewalks erected, which were burnt on the eighteenth of February, 1806; and five more were built in their places, and four of them again destroyed by fire on the thirteenth of November, 1819, and rebuilt. In 1803 the town voted to complete one hundred feet of a new street leading from Pleasant street to Beacon street, parallel with the ropewalks. This was shortly afterwards done, but the street was
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