by Eric Rutkow
Library of Congress
Millions of Americans have worked in industries dependent on trees. Pacific Northwest loggers sit on the stump of a giant fir tree.
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Laborers harvest turpentine from Southern pines.
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Workers pick oranges in California.
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Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot (seen above in a photo taken in 1907), who worked together to dramatically expand the national forest system, advocated for the wise use of natural resources through conservation.
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Others, like John Muir and John Burroughs (A photo taken in 1912), felt that nature deserved protection for its own sake and not just to ensure a long-term supply of resources.
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Numerous government agencies have appeared since the late nineteenth century to oversee the nation’s tree resources. A Forest Service ranger patrols for fire.
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Two scientists at the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin, run an experiment on a veneer cylinder.
National Agricultural Library
Agents from the Bureau of Plant Industry reject a gift of cherry trees from Japan after discovering infections in 1910.
Author’s Collection
Efforts to raise public awareness about trees have taken many forms. The 1932 Arbor Day stamp to celebrate the holiday’s sixtieth anniversary.
Author’s Collection/American Forests
A 1938 advertisement in American Forests after the arrival of Dutch elm disease.
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A poster promoting the Shelterbelt, a pet project implemented by FDR during the New Deal.
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A government poster from World War II encouraging forest fire prevention as a military tactic.
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A tree being planted in Levittown in Long Island, New York, the archetypal post-WWII suburb, where each plot featured a similar wood-framed home.
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Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City in 2010 at the 9/11 memorial site in downtown Manhattan dedicating the Survivor Tree, a Callery pear tree found alive among the wreckage at Ground Zero.
Notes
Introduction: The Death of Prometheus
“offers a richer”: John Muir. The Mountains of California. New York: The Century Co., 1894, 154.
The National Geographic article: Edmund Schulman. “Bristlecone Pine, Oldest Known Living Thing.” National Geographic 113, no. 3 (1958): 361.
“a dead crown”: Donald R. Currey. “An Ancient Bristlecone Pine Stand in Eastern Nevada.” Ecology 46 (1965): 565.
“present along a single”: Ibid.
“was like many”: Carl T. Hall. “Staying Alive: High in California’s White Mountains grows the oldest living creature ever found.” San Francisco Chronicle, August 23, 1998, SC-1.
“Cut ’er down”: Michael P. Cohen. A Garden of Bristlecones: Tales Change in the Great Basin. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1998, 72.
“the wooddes [were]”: E. G. R. Taylor, ed. “Document 46: Discourse of Western Planting by Richard Hakluyt, 1584.” In The Original Writings & Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts (vol. II). Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint Limited, 1967, 225.
“Well may ours”: James Hall. Notes on the Western States; containing descriptive sketches of their soil, climate, resources and scenery. Philadelphia: Harrison Hall, No. 72 S. Fourth Street, 1838, 101.
1: From Discovery to Revolution
“I marvaile not”: Richard Hakluyt. Divers voyages touching the discoverie of America and the Ilands . . . London: Thomas Woodcocke, dwelling in paules Church-yard, at the signe of the blacke beare, 1582, The Epistle.
“for the manifolde”: Taylor, 211.
“the Contrie”: Ibid., 222.
“all the commodities”: Ibid., 211.
“So that were there”: Ibid., 281.
“the present wante”: Ibid.
“Never so much [oak]”: William Harrison. The Description of England: The Classic Contemporary Account of Tudor Social Life. Dover Publications, 1994, 279.
“agreed that the New World”: Howard Mumford Jones. “The Colonial Impulse: An Analysis of the ‘Promotion’ Literature of Colonization.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 90, no. 2 (1946): 143.
“And England posessinge”: Taylor, 315.
“mightie greate wooddes”: Ibid., 224.
“no man can let”: Antoin E. Murphy, ed. “A Tract Against the High Rate of Usurie (1641) by Sir Thomas Culpepper.” In Monetary Theory: 1601–1758. London: Routledge, 1997, 4–5.
He determined, among other things: Henry S. Burrage. Gorges and the Grant of the Province of Maine 1622: A Tercentenary Memorial. Augusta: for the State of Maine, 1923, 47–48.
“I heare not”: A. G. Bradley, ed. “John Chamberlain. Letter to Dudley Carleton, 7 July, 1608.” In Travels and Works of Captain John Smith (part I), Edward Arber, ed. New York: Burt Franklin, n.d., xcii.
“[N]either the scattered Forrest”: Peter Mancall, ed. “Anonymous. A True Declaration of the Estate of the Colonie in Virginia (Issued by the Virginia Company) 1610.” In Envisioning America: English Plans for the Colonization of North America, 1580–1640. Boston, New York: Bedford Books, 1995, 129, 132.
“The ardent Love”: Foster Watson. Richard Hakluyt. London: Sheldon Press, 1924, 29.
“necessitie calling them”: William Bradford. Bradford’s History “Of Plimoth Plantation.” Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Co., State Printers, 1898, 97.
“soone lost both”: Ibid., 98.
“gave a sodaine jerk up”: Henry Martyn Dexter. Mourt’s Relation or Journal of the Plantation at Plymouth. Boston: John Kimball Wiggin, 1865, 25.
“whole countrie”: Bradford, 95.
“so incompassed with woods”: Dexter, 63.
“always cost a great”: Ibid., 51.
“halfe a quarter”: Ibid., 65.
“Here is good living”: Francis Higginson. New-Englands Plantation with the Sea Journal and Other Writings. Salem, MA: Essex Book and Print Club, 1908, 102.
“Trees both in hills”: William Wood. New England’s Prospect. London: Tho. Cotes, for John Bellamie, at the three Golden Lyons in Corne-hill, neere the Royall Exchange, 1634, 18.
“2 hoggsheads”: Bradford, 130.
“That for the preventing”: William Brigham, ed. The Compact with the Charter and Laws of the Colony of New Plymouth. Boston: Dutton and Wentwork, 1836, 28.
“[they would] dig”: Cornelis Van Tienhoven. Information Relative to Taking up Land in New Netherland, in the Form of Colonies or Private Boweries, 1650. In E. B. O’Callaghan. The Documentary History of the State of New-York, vol. IV. Albany: Charles Van Benthuysen, 1851, 31.
“so much paines”: Wood, 19.
“as bigge as”: Ibid.
“the great necessity”: George Louis Beer. The Old Colonial System, 1660–1754, Part I: The Establishment of the System, 1660–1688 (vol. I). New York: Macmillan, 1912, 81, fn. 1.
The initial shipment had occurred: William Strachey. The Historie of Travaile in Virginia Brittania. London: Hakluyt Society, 1849, 130.
“There is also the very good”: Samuel Pepys. The Diary of Samuel Pepys. London, New York: Macmillan, 1905, 445.
A 1736 article: The American Weekly Mercury, March 1–March 8, 1736, 3.
“When the male flowers”: Donald Culross Peattie. A Natural History of North American Trees. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007, 28.
“an Assortment of”: The New-Hampshire Gazette, and Historical Chronicle, April 14, 1775, 3.
the white pines were: John Wentworth to the Earl of Hillsborough, December 4, 1771, taken from Governor Wentworth’s letter-books in the archives at Concord, New Hampshire. In “The King’s Woods.” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 54 (1920–1921): 53.
“48 out of 50”: Ibid.
“[H]ere everyone’s hand”: Maurice Cary Blake. “A Mast-Fleet Letter of 1709.” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 78 (1966): 136.
“Nothing can Doe”: Ibid.
“never had right”: Robert Greenhalgh Albion. Forests and Sea Power: The Timber Problem of the Royal Navy, 1652–1862. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1965, 254.
“in the Execution”: “Benning Wentworth to Roger Wolcott, June 25, 1753.” Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, vol. XV. Hartford: Connecticut Historical Society, 1916, 310.
“was a man of sound”: Timothy Dwight. Travels; in New-England and New-York, vol. IV. New Haven: Timothy Dwight, 1822, 162.
“singled out one man”: John Wentworth to the Earl of Hillsborough, October 22, 1770. In Paul Wilderson. Governor John Wentworth & the American Revolution: The English Connection. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1994, 163.
This approach to enforcement: “The King’s Woods,” 56.
“especially when all”: The New-Hampshire Gazette, and Historical Chronicle, August 21, 1767, 1.
“to make use of”: Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775. Boston, 1838, 139, n. 4. In William R. Carlton. “New England Masts and the King’s Navy.” New England Quarterly 12, no. 1 (1939): 11.
“the lack of masts”: Albion, 282.
“peeping out”: Malcolm Freiberg. “An Unknown Stamp Act Letter.” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, 78 (1966): 140.
“How Glorious is”: Ibid., 141.
“[t]hree Guineas was”: Ibid., 140.
“with great solemnity”: Ibid., 141.
“the Affair at Liberty Tree”: Connecticut Courant, February 17, 1766, 2.
34 Local carpenters pruned: Boston Evening Post, February 17, 1766, 2.
“What better thing”: Quoted in Eric Sloane. A Reverence for Wood. New York: Funk, 1965, 75.
“a good deal above”: Francis Bernard. Letters to the Ministry from Governor Bernard, General Gage, and Commodore Hood. Salem, MA: Samuel Hall, near the Town-House, 1769, 18.
“an Idol for the Mob”: Douglass Adair and John A. Schutz, eds. Peter Oliver’s Origin & Progress of the American Rebellion: A Tory View (1781). Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961, 54.
“tore [the effigies]”: Boston Evening Post, November 4, 1765, 3.
“I do hereby”: Boston News-Letter and New-England Chronicle, December 19, 1765, supp. 2.
“regailed themselves on”: Boston Post Boy, May 19, 1766, 2.
“as a standing monument”: Boston News-Letter and New-England Chronicle, May 22, 1766, supp. 2.
The grantor stated that: Newport Mercury, April 14–April 21, 1766, 3.
A letter posted in: Boston Evening Post, April 6, 1767, 2.
“the everlasting Remembrance”: Boston Post Boy, August 18, 1767, 3.
The traders posted: Broadside. “Tradesmen’s Protest Against the Proceedings of the Merchants.” Boston: E. Russell, next the Cornfield, Union Street, November 3, 1773, collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
“impossible for [them]”: Essex Gazette, November 2–November 9, 1773, 59.
“After a long Spell”: Connecticut Courant, September 4, 1775, 2.
“The tree of liberty”: Thomas Jefferson. “Letter to Colonel Smith, November 13, 1787.” In H. A. Washington, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private, vol. II. New York: John C. Riker, 1853, 319.
2: The Fruits of Union
“zealously testified”: Benjamin Smith Barton. Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal, part I, vol. I. Philadelphia: T. & G. Palmer, 116, High-Street, 1804, 121–22.
“[h]e seemed to have been”: Ibid., 117.
“most of his medicines”: Ibid.
In September 1728, Bartram: Technically, several other gardens predated his. In 1694, German Pietists, for example, inaugurated a garden on the lower Wissahickon Creek in order to grow and study medicinal plants. Bartram’s garden, nonetheless, was the most well-known, historically important, and comprehensive, and the first created by a native-born American.
“I was on top of the tree”: William Darlington. Memorials of John Bartram and Humphry Marshall with Notices of Their Botanical Contemporaries. Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1849, 227.
“encouraged [him] to persist”: Barton, 118.
“to the curious in Europe”: Ibid.
“Thee need not collect”: Peter Collinson to John Bartram, March 12, 1735. Darlington, 73.
“exert[ing] thyself out”: Collinson to Bartram, December 14, 1737. Darlington, 105.
“There is nothing more”: Batty Langley. New Principles of Gardening. London: A. Bettesworth and J. Batley in Pater-Noster Row; J. Pemberton in Fleetstreet; T. Bowles in St. Paul’s Church-Yard; J. Clarke, under the Royal Exchange; and J. Bowles at Mercer’s Hall in Cheapside, 1728, x.
“planted out about ten thousand”: Collinson to Bartram, September 1, 1741. Darlington, 145.
“[They] are suspected both”: Collinson to Bartram, March 30, 1751. Darlington, 367.
“transport[ing] the rogue”: Collinson to Bartram, August 21, 1766. Darlington, 282.
“within less than half a century”: Mark Catesby. Preface to Hortus Britanno Americanus; or, a Curious Collection of Trees and Shrubs, the Produce of the British Colonies in North America. London: W. Richardson and S. Clark for John Ryall, 1763, iii.
“As to the Society”: Collinson to Bartram, July 10, 1739. Darlington, 132.
“And as the Wildernesses”: “A Copy of the Subscription Paper, for the Encouragement of Mr. John Bartram, promised in our last.” Pennsylvania Gazette, March 17, 1742, 3.
“Americans have not zeal”: Bartram to Collinson, December 18, 1742. Darlington, 162.
“all new-discovered plants”: “A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge Among the British Plantations in America,” May 14, 1743. Reprinted in Jared Sparks. The Works of Benjamin Franklin, vol. VI. Philadelphia: Childs & Peterson, 602 Arch St., 1840, 14–17.
“nearly the whole load”: Carl van Doren. “The Beginnings of the American Philosophical Society.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 87 (1943): 287.
“The communication between”: Benjamin Franklin to Bartram, May 27, 1777. Darlington, 406.
“more of the North American”: Bartram to Collinson, September 30, 1763. Darlington, 254.
“the greatest natural botanist”: Samuel Miller. A Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century, vol. III. London: J. Johnson, St. Paul’s Churchyard, 1805, 232. Linnaeus’s quotation appears in nearly all Bartram biographies, though the original source appears to be lost.
“Boxes of seeds”: Humphry Marshall. Arbustrum Americanum: The American Grove, or, An Alphabetical Catalogue of Forest Trees and Shrubs. Philadelphia: Joseph Crukshank, in Market-Street, Between Second and Third-Streets, 1785, back page.
“study the productions”: Henry Savage, Jr., and Elizabeth Savage. André and François André Michaux. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986, 34.
Additionally, of the eighteen: Ibid., 275–76.
One shipment from March 1786: Ibid., 63.
“on a par with all”: Ibid., 35.
“The greatest service”: Thomas Jefferson. “Appendix to Memoir: Note G.” In Thomas Jefferson Randolph, ed. Memoirs, Correspondence, and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, 1829, 144.
“Before this scheme”: Bartram to Collinson, September 30, 1763. Darlington, 254–55.
“Jefferson and several other”: Caspar Wistar to Moses Marshall, June 20, 1792. Darlington, 570.
“I proposed to several”: Charles Sprague Sargent. Journal of André Michaux, 1787–1796. Proceedings of the American Philosophy Society 26, no. 129 (1888), 89–90. Author’s translation.
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br /> “Bound by all manner”: André Michaux. “Exposition of the Basis upon which I have resolved to undertake the journey to the West of the Mississippi.” In Savage and Savage, 131.
one of Jefferson’s greatest: Jefferson to Benjamin Barton, February 27, 1803. In H. A. Washington, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. IV. New York: H. W. Derby, 1861, 470.
“I can’t tell a lie, Pa”: M. L. Weems. The Life of George Washington; with Curious Anecdotes Equally Honourable to Himself and Exemplary to His Young Countrymen. Philadelphia: Joseph Allen, 1833, 13–14.
“[W]e went through”: Jared Sparks. The Writings of George Washington, vol. II. Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Metcalf, and Hilliard, Gray, and Co., 1833, 416.
“If he does that”: Garry Wills. Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment. New York: Doubleday, 1984, 13.
“I am become a private citizen”: Washington to Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, February 1, 1784. George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741–1799: Series 2, Letterbooks.
“Plantations . . . are now”: Washington to William Grayson, January 22, 1785. George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741–1799: Series 2, Letterbooks.
His journal read: The Diaries of George Washington, vol. 4. January 12 and 28, 1785. Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, eds. The Papers of George Washington. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978, 75, 81.
“[e]mployed all day”: Ibid., 88. February 11, 1785.
“the greatest part of the day”: Ibid., 97. March 3, 1785.
“[T]hese Trees [are]”: Washington to Lund Washington, August 19, 1776. In The Magazine of History 2 (June–December 1905), 148–49.
“tho’ stored with”: The Diaries of George Washington, vol. 5. June 10, 1787. Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, eds. The Papers of George Washington. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1979, 166–67.
“did not answer”: The Diaries of George Washington, vol. 5. October 10, 1789. Ibid., 458.
