This article is adapted from a more extensive version by the author
that appears with citations in The Westchester Historian (Vol.
78, no. 3, Summer 2002) at pages 73-82.
Perhaps “Thomas
Pell’s Treaty Oak” is the only tree ever to merit an obituary on the
front page of The New York Times. The article, in the paper’s
April 9, 1906 issue, announced the death of the giant white oak the
previous day. Until then, the tree had stood for years on the grounds
of the Bartow-Pell
Mansion on Shore Road in Pelham Bay Park. Tradition
holds that beneath its limbs more than 250 years before, Thomas Pell
signed a treaty with local Siwanoy Native Americans and acquired 9,166
acres including what we know today as Pelham, New Rochelle, portions of
Bronx County and much of the land east of the Hutchinson River northward
to Mamaroneck This article documents the story of that magnificent
oak.
Thomas Pell Versus the Dutch
Thomas Pell of
Fairfield, Connecticut was among the earliest Englishmen to establish
settlements in today’s lower Westchester County. He traveled from
Fairfield in 1654 to sign the treaty with Siwanoy sachems only eleven
years after the Siwanoys massacred another famous settler, Anne
Hutchinson, along with most of her family.
Pell’s successful
negotiation of the treaty for the purchase of what came to be known as
the “Lordshipp & Mannour of Pelham” had enormous implications for the
dispute between the English and the Dutch over control of the area. The
tract was huge. The Dutch claimed some of it. Effective control of the
lands could block any further northward movement of Dutch settlers – at
least along the shore of the Long Island Sound westward to the
Hutchinson River.
The enormity of
Pell’s move was not lost on Dutch authorities. They confronted the
English settlers who arrived in the area, although they were
unsuccessful in their efforts to stop the English from settling here.
Ultimately, the
strength and resolve of Pell and the English settlers were fruitful.
The Dutch, facing a war with England they knew they could not win,
surrendered New Amsterdam to the English on September 8, 1664. New
Netherland, including Westchester, passed out of the hands of the
Dutch. On October 6, 1666, Thomas Pell’s rightful ownership of
virtually all the land transferred by the Siwanoys in the 1654
treaty
was confirmed by royal patent, signed and sealed by Governor Richard Nicolls.
Pell’s Treaty With the Siwanoys
Most historical
accounts say the Treaty was signed beneath a “Treaty Oak” on November
14, 1654. It appears from a contemporary handwritten copy
of the
Treaty, however, that it was signed on June 27, 1654. On that date,
Thomas Pell and a small band of Englishmen reportedly gathered beneath a
giant oak tree along with a Siwanoy named Anhõõke, also known as Wampage,
and four other Siwanoy Indians who have been described as
“sub-chieftains”. Wampage was widely believed to be the murderer of
Anne Hutchinson.
The whereabouts of
the original treaty are not known. Fortunately, though, a copy exists
in what is said to be Thomas Pell’s own handwriting. He reportedly
created it and forwarded it to relatives in England from whom it has
been retrieved and documented.
There is no record
of the price Thomas Pell paid for the land. His copy of the
treaty says
only that the sellers received “trou valew & just Satisfaction” for the
land. Westchester Historian Thomas Scharf, however, reported in 1886
that the “Indians received, it is said, as an equivalent for their deed
of the land, sundry hogshead of Jamaica rum.” Thomas Pell reportedly
took symbolic possession of his estate “by burying his seal with his
arms at the root of the oak”.
A
Fiery Death
For 250 years the
tree beneath which, it was said, the treaty was signed flourished.
Then, on April 8, 1906, disaster struck. The Treaty Oak died a fiery
death. It appears that the fire began either with a discarded cigarette
or cigar and perhaps was started by a group of small boys playing near
the tree. A news account that appeared on the front page of The New
York Times the following day described the death of the tree as
follows:
The historic Pell
Oak, a fine old tree eighty feet high, at the junction of the New
Rochelle and Prospect Hill Roads, under which Lord Pell stood when he
signed a treaty with the Indians early in the eighteenth [sic] century,
for the property now comprising the northeastern section of the Bronx,
was destroyed by fire early yesterday morning.
Several years ago
the Park Commission had a fence put around the tree, which began to show
signs of decay, in order to make it last as long as possible. Recently
a pile of dead leaves and brush accumulated within the fence, and it is
supposed that some one threw a lighted cigar or cigarette there,
starting the blaze. Before any one could put the fire out the flames
spread to the tree and burned it to a blackened stump.
A landscape report
subsequently prepared on behalf of The Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum
described the demise of the tree somewhat differently, though not
necessarily inconsistently. It says: “in 1906 some young boys started
a fire which swept up into the trunk, effectively ending its life.” The
fire was tragic. But, it seems, the tree had been dying for years.
One account,
published in 1909, noted that twenty years previously
the tree was eighty feet tall and quite majestic. Ten years after that,
according to the same account, the state of the tree had deteriorated
precipitously: “its once proud height shorn to about twelve feet above
the ground, yet still covered with second growth branches of luxuriant
beauty, and the stout old trunk still offering a sturdy defiance to the
ravages of time and the elements.”
The last years of
the legendary oak were described in another account
as follows:
Sometime prior to
1902 the tree was broken in two by a storm, yet, despite a hollow trunk,
it continued to thrive. In 1906 some young boys started a fire which
swept up into the trunk, effectively ending its life. The following
March the dead tree was blown over in a wind storm, leaving a small
stump contained within the iron fence which survived for a few years. .
. .
Once the gust of
wind blew over the dead tree, the sad remnant of Thomas Pell’s Treaty
Oak lay decaying on the ground “having crashed its way through the iron
railing” built to protect it.
Death
destroyed neither the legend nor the symbolism of what was known as
“Thomas Pell’s Treaty Oak”. On May 1, 1915, the Governor of New York
reportedly attended ceremonies during the formal opening of the
Bartow-Pell Mansion as the clubhouse of the International Garden Club
and planted a red oak near the site where the tree had once stood to
honor Thomas Pell’s Treaty Oak and all that it had come to symbolize.
Remnants of the Oak
Thomas Pell’s Treaty
Oak lives on, so to speak, in another way. Pieces of what are said to
be the venerable old oak are scattered among the collections of local
historical societies in homage to the tree and what it came to
symbolize.
If you visit The
New-York Historical Society at 2 West 77th Street in New York
City and make your way to the collection of The Henry Luce III Center
for the Study of American Culture on the fourth floor, you can view a
piece of the Treaty Oak. It is displayed in case 123. It is Item No.
INV.1062 in The Society’s collection.
The piece is about
fourteen and a half inches long, about eight and a half inches high and
about six and a quarter inches wide. It is a deep, rich, rusty brown
color. Portions show saw marks where the piece seems to have been sawed
away from other parts of the tree. There is a rectangular plaque
blackened with age affixed to its left front. The plaque reads:
“A
PIECE OF THE 'TREATY OAK'
-UNDER WHICH-
THOMAS PELL MADE A TREATY
WITH THE INDIAN SACHEMS
FOR THE MANOR OF PELHAM
NOVEMBER 14 – 1654
PRESENTED TO THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY
BY HOWLAND PELL JANUARY 19 – 1912”
Similarly,
the collection of the Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum includes a piece of the
what is said to be the Pell Treaty Oak. It is about eight inches long
and is encased within a glass-enclosed oval shadow box. Wire holds it
in place and it rests on a hand-lettered paper affixed to the interior
of the shadow box that reads in part:
THE
PELL TREE
THAT ONCE STOOD WITHIN THE CIRCULAR FENCE ON
THE BARTOW ESTATE
(NOW INCLUDED IN PELHAM BAY PARK, NEW YORK)
Another piece of the
tree is in the collection of the Thomas Paine Historical Society. It is
a tiny piece of the tree, perhaps one inch long and a half inch wide
affixed by two nails to the darkened frame of a wonderful
watercolor-on-paper painting of the tree attributed to Robert Bolton in
1835, but believed to have been painted by Nanette Bolton. The painting
shows a magnificent oak, covered with leaves. At the time of this
writing, the painting is on loan from the Thomas Paine Historical
Society to the Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum and is on public display.
Given the tradition
and lore that surrounded the Treaty Oak, other odds and ends of the tree
likely made their way into the hands of many locals and may to this day
be gathering dust in the trunks and attics of Lower Westchester County.
The Pell Treaty Oak Site Today
Most of the
circular, eight-and-a-half foot high iron fence that surrounded Thomas
Pell’s Treaty Oak in its final years still stands more than a century
after it was first built. It was erected as a “safeguard against the
depredations of relic hunters” who doubtless
contributed in some measure to the rapid deterioration of the oak in
1903.
As you turn from
Shore Road in Pelham Bay Park through the stone-columned gate and enter
the Bartow-Pell estate, look into the wooded area to your right. There,
about thirty yards from the roadway amidst the trees and shrubbery, is
what remains of the circular fence where the Treaty Oak stood.
Fact or Fiction?
Was the oak on the
Bartow-Pell Estate that burned in 1906 the actual tree beneath which the
Siwanoys granted their lands to Thomas Pell in 1654? No one knows.
Biologically, it would seem possible. White oaks remain among the most
abundant oaks in the eastern United States and have been known to “live
to great age, over 1000 years in some cases” and to reach heights of up
to 107 feet.
Certainly tradition
holds that the tree that burned in 1906 was the tree that in fact spread
its branches above the band that signed the treaty on that solemn
occasion. Odd references in the 1881 revised edition of Robert Bolton’s
History of Westchester, and in Thomas Scharf’s 1886 History of
Westchester, however, suggest otherwise. The former says the oak
“formerly stood a little to the westward of” the Bartow-Pell mansion.
The latter says the tree “stood until within twenty or thirty years past
on the Bartow estate.”
Such passages
suggest their authors believed the tree no longer stood at the time of
their publication. One possibility is that the passages were mere
lapses of unintended ambiguity in each of the two-volume histories of
Westchester County. Sadly, that may be wishful thinking.
A 1941 landscape
report on the Bartow-Pell site concluded that the tree that perished in
1906 was not the tree beneath which Thomas Pell signed his fateful
treaty with the Siwanoys. The report said:
Just as the Bartow
Mansion had been erroneously thought to be the Pell Manor House, over
time the oak that was enclosed in the iron fence became associated with
the Treaty Oak. However, numerous accounts by long-time local residents
seem to have put the matter to rest. . . . With the erection of the iron
fence in 1903, the site of this oak tree seemed to be indubitably linked
with the historic event of 1654. However, the claim was refuted in an
article in the Seventeenth Annual Report of the American Scenic and
Historic Preservation Society (1912) which stated that the “iron
fence in the Bartow House grounds does not indicate the site of the
Treaty Oak.” In addition to studying the written sources, the author
had consulted with Anne J. Bolton, the daughter of the Rev. Robert
Bolton who lived nearby in Pelham, who said that it had stood between
the Pelham Bridge and the entrance to the Bartow place alongside the
Post Road; she remembered that,”travelers on the Post Road were
accustomed to stop their horses under its branches to enjoy its
refreshing shade.” Later authors writing about Pelham Manor noted the
disputed claim, but acknowledged, that despite a possible historical
inaccuracy, the iron fence helped to keep alive the memory of the treaty
between Thomas Pell and the native Americans.
We will never know
whether the oak that perished in 1906 was, in fact, the tree beneath
which the famous treaty was signed. Somehow that does not seem
important. Thomas Pell’s Treaty Oak came to symbolize the sacrifice –
and glory – of those before us who carved Pelham and much of today’s
Westchester County out of the primeval forest that still existed in the
17th century, beginning on that day in 1654. . . .
Blake A. Bell and his family live in Pelham.
Blake serves as Deputy Historian of the Town of Pelham and Village
Historian of the Village of Pelham. He and his son, Brett, are avid
students of Pelham history.
Photo
Credits: Photo of Pell Treaty Oak Ca. 1903-05
in collection of Blake A. Bell (widely available photograph also in
collections of Huguenot-Thomas Paine Historical Association and the
Westchester County Historical Society); Image of Thomas
Pell's handwritten copy of the treaty with the Siwanoys signed on June
27, 1654, courtesy of The Office of the Historian of The Town of
Pelham; Photo with
caption "PELL TREATY OAK, IN PELHAM BAY PARK, NOW BLOWN DOWN" from The Pell Treaty Oak: Story of an Immense Tree on Shores of Pelham Bay,
Tribune, Mar. 21, 1909 (copy contained in scrapbook devoted to
Pelham and Mamaroneck prepared by Otto Hufeland and contained in The Otto
Hufeland Collection of the Westchester County Historical Society);
Photo of Woman at Site of the Pell Treaty Oak dated
March 9, 1924, courtesy of The Office of the Historian of The Town
of Pelham; Photo of Piece of the Pell Treaty Oak in the
Collection of the Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum taken by Blake A. Bell
on June 9, 2002; Photo of the Site of the Pell Treaty
Oak taken by Blake A. Bell on January 26, 2002.
