town, carrying the elm on his back. Having no money, with which 

 to purchase his favorite beverage, rum, he traded the young tree in 

 exchange for a pint, to Thaddeus Beecher, who kept a tavern where 

 the Exchange Building of New Haven now stands. 



Beecher at once planted the tree on the village green or public 

 square, which had been allowed to remain exactly as it was laid out 

 in 1639. Serving in its early days, and at the time the elm was 

 planted, as a market, public pig-pen, and place for watering cattle, 

 the historic green is, today, in the centre of the busy city, with which 

 the tall, spreading elm has so long been identified. 



The Kingsport Elm 



On Kingsport Farms, at Kingsport, Sullivan County, Tenn., is 

 a splendid old elm, with a spring issuing from its roots, in all proba- 

 bility the tree described by a party of Frenchmen who camped in the 

 neighborhood in 1790. It answers their description well, even to the 

 spring that bubbles up beneath it. 



Its circumference, which is mentioned as being twenty-two feet, 

 has increased to twenty-five and one-half feet, and its age is estimated 

 at more than 400 years. Directly back of the old elm is the remains 

 of one of the first silk mills in the south, perhaps in the whole country. 



The Oberlin Elm 



The elm on the college campus at Oberlin, O., which has been 

 fenced about and marked with a bronze tablet, shaded the first log 

 house built in Oberlin. This was erected in 1833, and was the begin- 

 ning of Oberlin College, the first educational institution in the world 

 to admit women on an equal footing with men. Lucy Stone, one of 

 the pioneer suffragists, was a graduate of Oberlin. 



The Washington 



One of the most famous trees in the whole country is this elm at 

 Cambridge, Mass., under whose "branches Washington took com- 

 mand of the Continental Army on July 3, 1875. It is thought to be 

 a survivor of the primeval forest that once covered the region, and 

 in its youth was nearly 100 feet in height, while the spread of its 

 branches measured 90 feet. 



On Nov. 30, 1864, the City Council decreed that "the committee 

 on Public Property cause a suitable tablet of durable material, either 

 granite, marble or iron to be placed on the Washington Elm in Ward 

 1, said tablet to commemorate in conspicuous letters the Revolutionary 

 event which rendered said tree historical." 



A large branch fell from the elm in 1872, and was used to make 

 a pulpit in a chapel nearby. Since that time, the old tree has gradually 

 succumbed to the attacks of insects and though still standing, has lost 

 much of its original beauty. 



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