Something attempted, something done,The graceful act of the children of Cambridge in presenting him with a chair made of the wood of the tree was as gracefully recognized by Longfellow in his poem, ‘From My Armchair.’ The chestnut tree grew at the corner of what is now Story street and Brattle street, opposite the Washington school. A fine elm is standing now on the opposite corner, and the branches of the two trees must have formerly arched together. A fine elm grows beside Craigie House, far over-topping it. The group of willows on Holmes' field, originally a marshy lowland, are supposed to be a relic of the first palisado built to protect the infant town from Indians and wild beasts. Harvard College yard can boast of a liberty tree and a rebellion tree, though they are not known by these names. The first stood south of Harvard Hall, and witnessed many gatherings of students in revolt against unpopular tutors. The name was afterward transferred to the Class Day tree. The rebellion tree, standing at the eastern front of Hollis Hall, was planted in 1792, and was the centre of patriotic meetings, and also meetings for the purpose of protesting against what they considered college injustice and tyranny. The father of Colonel T. W. Higginson set out many of the
Has earned a night's repose.
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by Longfellow: ‘Under this tree Washington first took command of the American army, July 3, 1775.’
This is perhaps the best known of all living American trees, the most honored, and certainly one of our oldest trees.
It is said that Washington had a platform built in its branches.
One writer on old trees says that in 1850 ‘it still retained its graceful proportions, its great limbs were intact, and it showed few signs of age.’
From the Washington elm imagination takes a short step to the ‘spreading chestnut tree,’ dearly loved by Longfellow, and made famous by him in two poems.
In the poem of ‘The Village Blacksmith,’ the most familiar of these, he has endeared to us that homely vocation and exalted the dignity of labor thereby.
Blessed is he who can truthfully say:—
Somerville. Historical Society. , 1907.
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