68 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1893. 



monarch of the forest is not less than six hundred years, and as oaks 

 live and survive it is more than probable that it is quite seven hun- 

 dred years old. From the time of the first settlement in West Boyls- 

 ton the tree has been called the "Old Oak." Aged citizens of the 

 town say that the tree is the same in appearance to-day as it was 

 sixty or seventy years ago, and in all probability the tree completed 

 its growth full two centuries ago. The branches on the northerly 

 side have been shortened by old age and the elements, but the diame- 

 ter of the spread of its branches from east to west is eighty feet, 

 while three of its branches extending south are forty-eight feet from 

 the centre of the tree bole. Its height is from sixty-five to seventy 

 feet, and the trunk forks at twelve feet. The land upon which this 

 tree stands was once a part of the estate of Major Ezra Beamau, a 

 patriot of the Revolution, and in his time the wealthiest and most 

 influential man in his section of the county. His regard for trees 

 was characteristic, and a tradition regarding himself and the old oak 

 tree is frequently told in West Boylston. It is in effect that Major 

 Beaman's love for the tree was so great, and so earnestly desired its 

 preservation, that he filled the trunk with wrought-iron nails that they 

 might turn the edge of auy destroying axe. The tradition is accept- 

 ed as the truth by some, but it probably had its origin in some little 

 circumstance or incident which served to iuterest him in the tree. 



Major Beaman has been dead just eighty-one years, and he sleeps 

 in the little family burying-ground directly opposite the old oak, 

 whose branches stretch across the road and almost to the grave of its 

 preserver, and thus in all these eighty-one years it has sheltered it 

 from the biting winds of winter and cast its shade above it iu the 

 midsummer sun. It is a happy and beautiful thought that these two 

 veterans, whose lives were once so intimately interwoven, are not 

 now wholly separated in death. 



Just a minute's walk from the West Boylston post-office, and on 

 the above named road to Clinton, is the Major Ezra Beaman place. 

 On the opposite side of the street from the estate is a clump of but- 

 tonwood, plane, or sycamore trees, and two amoug these are of enor- 

 mous size. The larger of the two was planted in 1748, and there is 

 ample substantiation of the fact, by Ezra Beaman when he was 

 twelve years old. This gives its age, reckoning from the date of its 

 planting, as 144 years. The trunk or stem ascends straight into the 

 air to a height exceeding 100 feet, and does not fork at all, but its 

 main branches, which are only four in number, are in the strictest 

 sense laterals. The first of these, a huge uplifted arm, shoots from 



