Web and Book design, Copyright, Kellscraft Studio 1999-2005 (Return to Web Text-ures)

Click Here to return to Old Park Street Content Page  Return to the Previous Chapter

(HOME)

AT a short distance above Joy Street, and close to the iron fence along Beacon Street Mall, there is a massive English elm, which is known to have been growing there for at least one hundred and forty years. It stands on a line leading directly north from the Gingko tree. An elaborate volume entitled “Campestris Ulm,” by Joseph Henry Curtis (Boston, 1910), contains an historical sketch of the life of this tree, and describes various events which have occurred almost under its shade in past years. Since the tragic fall of its American cousin, the Great Elm, in 1876, this one has been the patriarch of the Common, and no rival claimant for that distinguished title has appeared. It is believed to have been planted in the autumn of 1780 by authority of the Selectmen in response to a petition of John Hancock at about the time of his inauguration as the first Governor of Massachusetts under the Constitution.