Historic leaves, volume 5, April, 1906 - January, 1907

[86] square, are five large white-ash trees, which were set out by Joseph Adams some time previous to 1800. The largest of these is thirteen feet, ten inches in circumference, the smallest eight feet, six inches. Mr. Adams built his house, now better known as the Magoun house, on the top of Winter Hill in 1783. Of the orchard he planted there remain two apple trees. One of them has lately taken a new lease of life through the cultivation of a vegetable garden, and bears apples as fine in flavor as ever. (This tree was cut down December, 1906.) The other, and a very old cherry tree, are best seen from Central street, near Broadway.

On this estate a sweet apple tree was planted by one of the daughters, Rebecca, afterwards Mrs. Jonas Tyler, of Charlestown. As she died in 1,804, the tree was in the neighborhood of a hundred years old when it was blown down in 1897. From some of the wood a frame for the charter of Anne Adams Tufts chapter, D. A. R., was made, and two gavels, one of which is the property of the chapter, and the other of the Coenonia Club.

Near the spot where the ash trees stand was an encampment of soldiers during the Revolution, who made part of the havoc cutting down trees mentioned earlier in this paper. The logs which formed their barracks were afterwards used by Mr. Adams to build his barn. Mr. Adams built a fence with a red gate, an entrance to the field, the line of which the ash trees bordered. Miss Augusta F. Woodbury, one of the early pupils of the high school, in 1854 wrote a poem inspired by these trees, which may be of interest here:—