Charter Oak: Difference between revisions

The '''Charter Oak''' was an unusually large [[white oak]] [[tree]] growing, from around the 12th or 13th century until 1856, on what the English colonists named Wyllys Hill, in [[Hartford, Connecticut]], [[United States|USA]].

 

The [[Netherlands|Dutch]] explorer Adrian (or Adriaen) [[Adriaen Block|Block]] described, in his log in 1614, a tree, at the future site of Hartford, understood to be this one. In the 1630s, a delegation of local Indians is said to have approached Samuel Wyllys, the early settler who owned and cleared much of the land around it, encouraging its preservation and describing it as planted ceremonially, for the sake of peace, when their tribe first settled in the area.

 

The Museum of Connecticut History (a subdivision of the [[Connecticut State Library]]) credits the idea that Andros never got the original charter, and displays a parchment that it regards as the original. (The [[Connecticut Historical Society]] is said to possess a "fragment" of it.)

 

[[Image:Charter Oak in Hartford CT.jpg|thumb|right|250px|The Old Charter Oak]]

The Charter Oak was already in poor condition from the time of the incident it was named for, though it achieved a circumference of 20 or 30 feet before [[August 21]], [[1856]], when it fell at night in a severe storm. At sunset on the day of its fall, the bells of the city were tolled and a band of music played funeral dirges over its ruins.<ref name=Keeler /> Formal mourning was held for it, pieces of its wood were treated as [[relic]]s (including three chairs, one of which is the ceremonial seat of the president of the [[Connecticut Senate]]). New trees sprouted from its [[acorn]]s were planted, including an oak forest, and trees standing {{as of|1996|lc=on}} less than a mile (about a kilometer) away, outside the [[Connecticut State Capitol|State Capitol]] and in [[Bushnell Park]].