Waterbury evening Democrat., 1908-08-22
FAMOUS CHARTER OAK.
Fall of Tree in Which Wadsworth
 Secreted Important Paper.

Fall of Tree in Which Wadsworth
 Secreted Important Paper.
 Fifty-two years ago yesterday the Charter Oak was felled in violent storm of rain and wind, and whole commonwealth mourned its loss as the loss of an old friend. About this sturdy old patriarch chung the tenderest sentiment of a people whose state is rich in the traditions of earlier days. Small wonder, then, that its downfall should be cause for keen regret; small wonder that it's memory should be perpetuated by T fitting monument to mark the spot on which it grew. and by regard which finds expression in the nick name of our city, the Charter Oak city, and in the names of many of our sturdiest institutions. More famous by far than Washington Elm, 1t is held in greatest reverence, to- day. than in the day of its fall It's scattered remains are precious pos session, its story dear and familiar tale to every school boy and girl throughout the land. Fallen from its proud state this half century, it is yet one, of the landmarks of our glorious national history. In our own state it stands for something more-for the preserver of her in. tegrity as an American common wealth, since it concealed in it's bosom the charter which guaranteed to Connecticut her separate and equal station among the kings colonies, at time when Governor Edmund Andros would have merged this commonwealth with the rest of New England, and effaced our colon ial identity.
 Few, indeed, are they who remem- Der the old oak as it stood on the hillside facing Charter Oak avenue, but paintings and pictures have made it familiar to every person to whom the history of his state and of his country is dear, and for us who live near to the place where it grew and fell it requires no great imagination to picture the tree standing in "a simple glory and strength where now stands a pile of solid granite to com memorate its history. ..--s
 What wealth of history the Charter Oak lived through! Ten centuries, thousand years of change and decay In those ten centuries the destiny of the world was changed. From the darkness of pagan Rome a Christian civilization had emerged, and in the dark ages wrested slowly but surely from superior physical forces the. supremacy of the world. While the acorn from which the Charter Oak grew was sending forth its first tender shoot, the forces were moulding for the great crusades to the Orient. The geography of Flu rope was changing and shifting from day to day, and with every change was more surely affirmed unto us a Christian civilization and a political freedom which should find it's high est expression in this western world, then undiscovered, almost undreamed of. -
 Through the changes of the mid dle ages, the period of re-birth in learning and the great awakening and renewed activities which fol- lowed in every part of the world, through the centuries when art and literature broke away from monastic halls, from the stern, confining classicism of the pre-Christian era, and took their trend toward the broader, more liberal romanticism which marks the years from the fif- teenth to the seventeenth century, this old oak stood, waiting the time when 1t should play its humble part in the preservation and perpetuatiou of liberty. What glorious history and what a glorious spirit which pre-. serves 1t sacred in song and story and perpetuates it unto the unnum' bered generations of the future.
 Connecticut loves the Charter Oak; loves its name and story; loves the pictured image of its gnarled and knotted branches, widespread. ing, rugged, sturdy, picturesque even unto the last day of its grand life; loves the gaping wound in its side, which time could not heal, and which proved at once the source oi It's fame and the cause of it's too, too early death.
 On the day that marked its fall August 21, 1856, Colts band assem- bled about its prostrate trunk and played dirge, and at sunset all the church bells in the city tolled fortl to mark it's physical passing. And still the Charter Oak lives, very tru. lives; and its life shall be measured only with the life of our liberty. ant its place in the hearts of our people be yielded only when is yielded tha !. love of liberty which preserved oul charter, and our colonial integrit. and in larger way won and pre- served the freedom and liberty o our country -Hartford Times