Misplaced Pages

#202797

47-615: The Charter Oak was an enormous white oak tree growing on Wyllys Hill in Hartford, Connecticut , from around the 12th or 13th century until it fell during a storm in 1856. Connecticut colonists hid Connecticut's Royal Charter of 1662 within the tree's hollow to thwart its confiscation by the English governor-general. The oak symbolized American independence and was commemorated on the Connecticut State Quarter . It

94-416: A jarrah tramway lay upon 2.3-metre-long (7.5 ft) sleepers , bounded by two 70-centimetre-wide (28 in) strips of jarrah planks for cart and carriage wheels. The 90-centimetre (35 in) gap was filled with limestone rubble to be used by horses. This reduced the cost of road building by up to 85% after its widespread introduction in 1908. However, increased traffic and suburban development rendered

141-526: A cane made from a branch of the oak in January 1868, as impeachment proceedings were underway. In 1868, Mark Twain wrote of a trip that he took to Hartford and mused on the pride that his guide showed in the uses to which the lumber of the Charter Oak had been put: Anything that is made of its wood is deeply venerated by the inhabitants, and is regarded as very precious. I went all about the town with

188-400: A chair, and whispered, "Charter Oak." I exhibited the accustomed reverence. He showed me a walking stick, a needlecase, a dog-collar, a three-legged stool, a boot-jack, a dinner-table, a ten-pin alley, a toothpicker — I interrupted him and said, "Never mind – we'll bunch the whole lumber-yard, and call it—" "Charter Oak," he said. "Well," I said, "now let us go and see some Charter Oak, for

235-608: A change." I meant that for a joke; But how was he to know that, being a stranger? He took me around and showed me Charter Oak enough to build a plank-road from here to Great Salt Lake City.... Charter Oak fell during a storm on August 21, 1857, and residents collected many acorns and planted them in cities and towns across the state. These trees are known as "Charter Oak scions," and they were often planted in parks, town greens, cemeteries, and near post offices and town halls. Many of them are marked with plaques and monuments, but others are anonymous. The total number of Charter Oak scions

282-750: A citizen whose ancestors came over with the Pilgrims in the Quaker City – in the Mayflower , I should say — and he showed me all the historic relics of Hartford. He showed me a beautiful carved chair in the Senate Chamber, where the bewigged and awfully homely old-time governors of the Commonwealth frown from their canvas overhead. "Made from Charter Oak," he said. I gazed upon it with inexpressible solicitude. He showed me another carved chair in

329-398: A deep glossy green upper surface. They usually turn red or brown in autumn, but depending on climate, site, and individual tree genetics, some trees are nearly always red, or even purple in autumn. Some dead leaves may remain on the tree throughout winter until very early spring. The lobes can be shallow, extending less than halfway to the midrib, or deep and somewhat branching. Quercus alba

376-574: A thunderstorm in 2002. Another noted white oak was the Basking Ridge white oak in New Jersey , estimated to have been over 600 years old when it died in 2016. The tree measured 8 m (25 ft) in circumference at the base and 5 m (16 ft) in circumference 1.2 m (4 ft) above the ground. The tree was 23 m (75 ft) tall, and its branches spread over 38 m (125 ft) from tip to tip. The oak, claimed to be

423-582: A thunderstorm on June 6, 2002, was the honorary state tree of Maryland. Being the subject of a legend as old as the colony itself, the Charter Oak of Hartford, Connecticut is one of the most famous white oaks in America. An image of the tree now adorns the reverse side of the Connecticut state quarter . The white oak from the movie The Shawshank Redemption , known as the " Shawshank tree " and

470-605: Is a road composed of wooden planks or puncheon logs , as an efficient technology for traversing soft, marshy, or otherwise difficult ground. Plank roads have been built since antiquity, and were commonly found in the Canadian province of Ontario as well as the Northeast and Midwest of the United States in the first half of the 19th century. They were often built by turnpike companies. The Wittmoor bog trackway

517-567: Is a 500-year-old white oak tree that sits in the town of Bedford in New York. It is the mascot of the town. It sits at the corner of the Hook Road and the old Bedford Road (now Cantitoe Street). The ground the tree stands on was deeded to the Town of Bedford in 1942 by Harold Whitman in memory of his wife, Georgia Squires Whitman. It has seen Westchester history from Native American settlements to

SECTION 10

#1732765144203

564-643: Is a light ash-gray and peels somewhat from the top, bottom and/or sides. According to Chris Bolgiano in The Appalachian Forest: A Search for Roots and Renewal , the largest tree ever cut in West Virginia was a white oak that measured thirteen feet thick at its base. White oak may live 200 to 300 years, with some even older specimens known. The Wye Oak in Wye Mills, Maryland was estimated to be over 450 years old when it finally fell in

611-543: Is fairly tolerant of a variety of habitats, and may be found on ridges, in valleys, and in between, in dry and moist habitats, and in moderately acid and alkaline soils. It is mainly a lowland tree, but reaches altitudes of 1,600 m (5,249 ft) in the Appalachian Mountains . It is often a component of the forest canopy in an oak-heath forest . Frequent fires in the Central Plains region of

658-461: Is not tolerant of urban pollution and road salt and due to its large taproot, is unsuited for a street tree or parking strips/islands. The acorns are much less bitter than the acorns of red oaks. They can be eaten by humans but, if bitter, may need to have the tannins leached. They are also a valuable wildlife food, notably for turkeys, wood ducks, pheasants, grackles, jays, nuthatches, thrushes, woodpeckers, rabbits, squirrels, and deer. The white oak

705-706: Is on display at the permanent exhibition of the Archaeological Museum Hamburg in Harburg, Hamburg . This type of plank road is known to have been used as early as 4,000 BC with, for example, the Post Track found in the Somerset levels near Glastonbury , England. This type of road was also constructed in Roman times. From the mid-1840s and to mid 1850s, the United States experienced

752-499: Is sometimes confused with the swamp white oak , a closely related species, and the bur oak . The white oak hybridizes freely with the bur oak, the post oak , and the chestnut oak . Grandinin /roburin E, castalagin / vescalagin , gallic acid , monogalloyl glucose ( glucogallin ) and valoneic acid dilactone , monogalloyl glucose, digalloyl glucose , trigalloyl glucose , ellagic acid rhamnose, quercitrin and ellagic acid are phenolic compounds found in Q. alba . Quercus alba

799-523: Is the name given to each of two historic plank roads or boardwalks , trackway No. I being discovered in 1898 and trackway No. II in 1904 in the Wittmoor bog in northern Hamburg , Germany. The trackways date to the 4th and 7th century AD, both linked the eastern and western shores of the formerly inaccessible, swampy bog. A part of the older trackway No. II dating to the period of the Roman Empire

846-532: Is the only known food plant of the Bucculatrix luteella and Bucculatrix ochrisuffusa caterpillars. The young shoots of many eastern oak species are readily eaten by deer. Dried oak leaves are also occasionally eaten by white-tailed deer in the fall or winter. Rabbits often browse twigs and can girdle stems. White oak has tyloses that give the wood a closed cellular structure, making it water- and rot-resistant. Because of this characteristic, white oak

893-519: Is unknown, but was probably near 100. As these scions grew to maturity, their acorns and seedlings were distributed around the state to mark civic occasions. Such occasions included George Washington's 200th birthday in 1932, the 300th anniversary of the charter in 1962, the new state constitution in 1965, and the national bicentennial in 1976. Each of these celebrations was marked by the distribution and planting of Charter Oak seedlings in Connecticut and elsewhere. Two were even sent to France and planted at

940-401: Is used by coopers to make wine and whiskey barrels as the wood resists leaking. It has also been used in construction, shipbuilding, agricultural implements and in the interior finishing of houses. White oak splints have been used historically by Native Americans for basketry. White oak logs feature prominent medullary rays which produce a distinctive, decorative ray and fleck pattern when

987-600: The Dominion of New England in 1686, in part to take firmer control of them. He later appointed Sir Edmund Andros as governor-general over it, who stated that his appointment had invalidated the charters of the various constituent colonies. He went to each colony to collect their charters, presumably seeing symbolic value in physically reclaiming the documents. Andros arrived in Hartford late in October 1687, where his mission

SECTION 20

#1732765144203

1034-712: The Plank Road Boom and a subsequent bust. The first plank road in the US was built in North Syracuse, New York , to transport salt and other goods; it appears to have copied earlier roads in Canada, which had copied Russian ones. The plank road boom, like many other early technologies, promised to transform the way people lived and worked and led to permissive changes in legislation seeking to spur development, speculative investment by private individuals, etc. Ultimately,

1081-446: The white oak , is one of the preeminent hardwoods of eastern and central North America. It is a long-lived oak , native to eastern and central North America and found from Minnesota , Ontario , Quebec , and southern Maine south as far as northern Florida and eastern Texas . Specimens have been documented to be over 450 years old. Although called a white oak, it is very unusual to find an individual specimen with white bark;

1128-498: The "Tree of Hope", was estimated to be more than 200 years old when it fell. The tree is seen during the last ten minutes of the movie. As the movie gained fame, the tree became popular as well, and used to attract tens of thousands of movie fans and tourists every year. A portion of the tree came down on July 29, 2011, when the tree was split by lightning during a storm. The remaining half of the tree fell during heavy winds just short of five years later, on July 22, 2016. The Bedford Oak

1175-698: The Boydton Plank Road from Petersburg southwards to just north of the North Carolina line. On the U.S. West Coast the Canyon Road of Portland, Oregon was another important but short artery and was built between 1851 and 1856. Kingston Road (Toronto) (Governor's Road) and Danforth Avenue , in Toronto , were plank roads built by the Don and Danforth Plank Road Company in the late 18th and

1222-568: The Charter Oak . in her 1827 collection of poetry. Here she remarks that this poem was occasioned by the death of the last proprietor of the name of Wyllys, in whose family this estate had remained since the country's first settlement. The second is [REDACTED] The Charter-Oak, at Hartford ., in Scenes in My Native Land, 1845, which is accompanied by descriptive text. Notes Bibliography Quercus alba Quercus alba ,

1269-474: The House, "Charter Oak," he said. I gazed again with interest. Then he looked at the rusty, stained, and famous old Charter, and presently I turned to move away. But he solemnly drew me back and pointed to the frame. "Charter Oak," said he. I worshipped. We went down to Wadsworth's Atheneum, and I wanted to look at the pictures; but he conveyed me silently to a corner, and pointed to a log, rudely shaped somewhat like

1316-501: The Revolutionary War to modern times. The video game Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth features a character named Quercus Alba who bears some resemblance to the white oak and plants in general. Insects and the damage from insects account for the greatest amount of threat to acorn production from white oaks, particularly nut weevils, moth larvae, and gall forming cynipids. Plank road A plank road

1363-556: The Senate in the state capitol were made from wood salvaged from the Charter Oak. Another chair was made by noted painter Frederic Church , a native of Hartford, and is still on display at his former home . Charter Oak Engine Co. No. 1 presented a wooden baseball made from the Charter Oak to the Charter Oak Base Ball Club of Brooklyn on September 20, 1860. Supporters of President Andrew Johnson presented him with

1410-540: The United States prevented oak forests, including Q. alba , from expanding into the Midwest. However, a decrease in the frequency of these natural fires after European settlement caused rapid expansion of oak forests into the Great Plains, negatively affecting the natural prairie vegetation. Quercus alba is cultivated as an ornamental tree somewhat infrequently due to its slow growth and ultimately huge size. It

1457-662: The Vega series, the White Lotus, and the limited edition 40th anniversary model. White Oak has a mellower timbre than more traditionally used maple , and yet still has enough power and projection to not require a metal tone ring. Barrels made of American white oak are commonly used for oak aging of wine , in which the wood is noted for imparting strong flavors. Also, by federal regulation, bourbon whiskey must be aged in charred new oak (generally understood to mean specifically American white oak) barrels. White oak has served as

Charter Oak - Misplaced Pages Continue

1504-531: The Versailles palace. The Hoadley Oak is a Charter Oak scion in Hartford's Bushnell Park , estimated to be over 120 years of age. It was cut down by the city in February 2023 after "considerable rotting," perhaps due to an extended drought. A local artist plans to convert the remaining stump to an "interactive art piece". Lydia Sigourney published two poems on this tree, [REDACTED] Wyllys' Hill and

1551-472: The early 19th centuries. Highway 2 from Toronto eastwards was a plank road in the 19th century that was later paved. In 1833 Scarborough-Markham Plank Road was authorized to build a road from Danforth Road to Highway 7 to Ringwood and east on Stouffville Road to Main Street Stouffville. Plank roads are used exclusively in the Canadian fishing outport of Harrington Harbour , Quebec because

1598-450: The ground. Trees growing in a forest will become much taller than ones in an open area which develop to be short and massive. The Mingo Oak was the tallest known white oak at over two hundred feet with a trunk height of 44.2 m (145 ft) before it was felled in 1938. It is not unusual for the crown spread of a white oak tree to be as wide as it is tall, but specimens growing at high altitudes may only become small shrubs. The bark

1645-590: The guide of our ancestors for centuries as to the time of planting our corn; when the leaves are the size of a mouse's ears, then is the time to put the seed into the ground. The name "Charter Oak" stems from the event in late 1687, when Connecticut colonists used it as a hiding place for the Charter of 1662. King Charles II granted the Connecticut Colony an unusual degree of autonomy in 1662. His successor James II consolidated several colonies into

1692-407: The official state tree of Illinois after selection by a vote of school children. There are two "official" white oaks serving as state trees, one located on the grounds of the governor's mansion, and the other in a schoolyard in the town of Rochelle . The white oak is also the state tree of Connecticut and Maryland . The Wye Oak , probably the oldest living white oak until it fell because of

1739-676: The oldest in the United States, began showing signs of poor health in the mid-2010s. The tree was taken down in 2017. Sexual maturity begins at around 20 years, but the tree does not produce large crops of acorns until its 50th year and the amount varies from year to year. Acorns deteriorate quickly after ripening, the germination rate being only 10% for six-month-old seeds. As the acorns are prime food for insects and other animals, all may be consumed in years of small crops, leaving none that would become new trees. The acorns are usually sessile, and grow to 15 to 25 mm ( 1 ⁄ 2 –1 in) in length, falling in early October. In spring,

1786-439: The substantially cheaper red oak. USS  Constitution is made of white oak and southern live oak , conferring additional resistance to cannon fire. Reconstructive wood replacement of white oak parts comes from a special grove of Quercus alba known as the " Constitution Grove" at Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division . Deering Banjo Company have made several 5-string banjos using white oak - including members of

1833-765: The technology failed to live up to its promise, and millions of dollars in investments evaporated almost overnight. Three plank roads, the Hackensack , the Paterson , and the Newark , were major arteries in northern New Jersey . The roads travelled over the New Jersey Meadowlands , connecting the cities for which they were named to the Hudson River waterfront. U.S. Route 1 in Virginia follows

1880-559: The town is built directly over a hilly, rocky shore. ATVs are the only mode of transportation there. In Perth , Western Australia , plank roads were important in the early growth of the agricultural and outer urban areas because of the distances imposed by swamps and the relatively-infertile soil. As it cost £2,000/km to construct roads by conventional means, the local councils, known as road boards, were experimenting with cheaper approaches to road building. A method called Jandakot Corduroy had been developed at Jandakot south-east of Perth:

1927-450: The usual colour is a light gray. The name comes from the colour of the finished wood. In the forest it can reach a magnificent height and in the open it develops into a massive broad-topped tree with large branches striking out at wide angles. Quercus alba typically reaches heights of 24 to 30 metres (80–100 feet) at maturity, and its canopy can become quite massive as its lower branches are apt to extend far out laterally, parallel to

Charter Oak - Misplaced Pages Continue

1974-586: The wood is quarter sawn . Quarter sawn white oak was a signature wood used in mission style oak furniture by Gustav Stickley in the Craftsman style of the Arts and Crafts movement . White oak is used extensively in Japanese martial arts for some weapons, such as the bokken and jo . It is valued for its density, strength, resiliency and relatively low chance of splintering if broken by impact, relative to

2021-583: The young leaves are delicate, silvery pink, and covered with a soft blanket-like down. The petioles are short, and the clustered leaves close to the ends of the shoots are pale green and downy, resulting in the entire tree having a misty, frosty look. This condition continues for several days, passing through the opalescent changes of soft pink, silvery white, and finally, yellow green. The leaves grow to be 12.5 to 21.5 centimetres (5– 8 + 1 ⁄ 2 inches) long and 7 to 11.5 centimetres ( 2 + 3 ⁄ 4 – 4 + 1 ⁄ 2  in) wide and have

2068-417: Was also depicted on a commemorative half dollar and a postage stamp in 1935, Connecticut's tercentennial. In the 1630s, a delegation of local Indians approached Samuel Wyllys, the settler who owned and cleared much of the land around Hartford, to encourage preservation of the tree, describing it as having been planted ceremonially for the sake of peace when their tribe first settled in the area: It has been

2115-482: Was at least as unwelcome as it had been in the other colonies. The incident took place on October 31, 1687, in the upper room at Zachariah Sanford's tavern. Andros demanded the document, and the colonists produced it, but the candle lights were suddenly doused during the ensuing discussion. The colonists spirited the document out a window, and Captain Joseph Wadsworth carried it to the oak tree. In 1900, it

2162-703: Was overthrown in Boston two years later in the 1689 Boston revolt , and the Dominion of New England was dissolved. The oak was blown down by a violent, tempestuous storm on August 21, 1856, and its timber was made into many chairs now displayed in the Hartford Capitol Building. The desk of the Governor of Connecticut and the chairs for the Speaker of the House of Representatives and President of

2209-451: Was suggested that a copy was surreptitiously substituted for the original in June 1687 and the original was hidden in the oak lest Andros find it in any search of buildings. The Museum of Connecticut History credits the idea that Andros never got the original charter and displays a parchment that it regards as the original. The Connecticut Historical Society possesses a fragment of it. Andros

#202797