Several old trees once stood :close about the Common, planted probably soon after those first ordinances for the purpose. ‘The finest English elm in town’ stood alone in its glory in what was known as Phillips pasture on Fort Hill, and dated probably from 1700. There was also a very tall English elm on Sudbury street, on the old Storer estate; and on the edge of High street, in what was then Quincy place, stood three handsome English elms, supposed to have been set out early in 1700.
Opposite the Old Granary Burying Ground stood a row of fine trees, which originally formed an avenue known as Paddock's Mall, which were planted in 1762. As Paddock was coach-builder to the Tory gentry, these were spared by the British during their occupation of Boston, but the trees suffered, later, from the hands of the patriots. Some of them survived until 1874, when they were removed, an act which excited the indignation of Longfellow, and doubtless others, when he read in the morning paper the news of the felling of the last of the Paddock elms. An elm, believed to have been one of the Paddock elms transplanted, was sacrificed in the location of the Congregational building. Had it been within the Granary Burying Ground, perhaps it might have been saved. ‘The Listener’ has this to say about the Paddock elms and the Old Granary Burying Ground:—
‘The missing foliage of the majestic collection of British elms that Major Adino Paddock, the London coach-maker, planted and guarded through his life against all indignities more vigilantly than the city forester of our times did, is made good to some extent by the Granary Burying Ground's trees, which go to form one of the most important and characteristic features of the old town. Seen from Washington street, as one turns into Bromfield street, this high bank of massed frondage is crowned in just the right place by a segment of the dome, that in the sunlight ’
