Historic Elm

Date

pre-1833-1965

Location

Tappan Square, corner of Main and College Streets (destroyed by disease)

Architects/Collaborators

N/A

History

In 1833, the year that Oberlin's founders John J. Shipherd and Philo P. Stewart picked the site for Oberlin College, this American Elm tree was a five-inch sapling in a dense forest. The tree was located on what is now Tappan Square. Legend has it that Shipherd and Stewart tied their horses to the tree, knelt beneath it to dedicate their enterprise, and saved it from the axe because if its beauty and symmetry. A short distance from the tree the first log cabin in the Oberlin Colony was built by Peter Pindar Pease. In 1900 the College erected an iron fence around the tree and attached a tablet inscribed, 'Historic Elm. Near this tree the logs were laid for the first dwelling in Oberlin, April 16, 1833.' (That fence is now encircling a large tree behind Dascomb Hall.) As is true for many college campuses, elms were vigorously planted at Oberlin early on and they were huge specimens when Dutch Elm Disease struck starting in 1950. The Historic Elm succumbed to this disease, spread by beetles that require a large population of elms to exist. It was taken down on April 13, 1965. In 1976, as a Bicentennial project, an aluminum memorial ring on the site of the Historic Elm was dedicated to the memory of Charles Martin Hall, whose bequest entailed the establishment of Tappan Square as a green space protected from the construction of buildings. The City of Oberlin contributed installation costs and labor for the memorial ring.

Sources

"Tappan Square, Arboretum Collection and History" (pamphlet), Oberlin College, ca. 1995. Oberlin College Archives, Trees in Oberlin Subject File.

Chester F. Ralston, "Oberlin Trees of Campus and Town" (pamphlet), Oberlin College, 1944. Oberlin College Archives, Trees in Oberlin Subject File.

Notes from the Oberlin News Tribune, October 21, 1976, Archivist's hunch cards, Oberlin College Archives.