Charter Oak

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 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 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 the Senate in the state capitol were made from wood salvaged from the Charter Oak.

[12] Supporters of President Andrew Johnson presented him with a cane made from a branch of the oak in January 1868, as impeachment proceedings were underway.

[13] 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:[14] 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 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.

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 a chair, and whispered, "Charter Oak."

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.

[15] 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.

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.