[64] thirteen feet in circumference. A near-by resident says: ‘It was a fine, spreading tree, whose branches came down nearly to the ground, so that the children of the Walnut Hill school used to swing on them. There was a pond near, but the sewers have drained it. Of the elms on the Walnut Hill school lot, adjoining on the east, the largest one grew up naturally; the others were set out by the town probably about 1849 or 1850.’
The elm in the yard nearly opposite this group of trees is almost 100 years old. The above-mentioned writer tells this story of it:
I have heard my mother say, after she came here, sixty-six years ago, there was a man who, when he drove by, would stop his team, jump over the stone wall, and clasp his hands around the tree to see how much it had grown. He said, one Sunday, when walking out with a girl, they pulled up two switches, and set them out. His died, but hers lived. They did not know the man, and he came but seldom.
One very cold winter's day father decided to cut the elm down. He ground the axe and came into the house to whet it by the fire. Mother did not want the tree cut down, and kept him busy talking till it was too dark. Next day there was other work, so the tree was spared.
A small elm was removed from this locality by Lorenzo W. Dow about 1852, and stands, a notable tree, in his yard on the top of Clarendon Hill.
On the golf grounds there is a stump of a chestnut tree, four or five feet long, and a yard in diameter, with new growth springing from the old root. The writer's theory in regard to this is, that it may have been a sapling left at the time the original woods were cut. Calculations based on the average rate of growth of chestnut trees would bring the age of this tree to 120 years at the time it was cut down, now many years ago, and carry the date of it back to the time of the Revolution. If this is correct reasoning, there is a chance to preserve in one of the young shoots a real child of the forest.
(To be continued.)
