The Charter Oak, A Colony Hides Its Liberties

The story has been told so many times it has grown almost mythological, which is exactly what good political symbols require. In October of sixteen eighty-seven, Sir Edmund Andros arrived in Hartford as the new royal governor of the Dominion of New England, a consolidation scheme by King James the Second designed to tighten the crown's grip on its restless American colonies. Andros had come specifically to demand the surrender of Connecticut's royal charter of sixteen sixty-two, which granted the colony a remarkable degree of self-governance.

The Connecticut colonists stalled. A candle was extinguished at the meeting table. And when the candle was relit, the charter was gone.

According to the tradition, and it is worth noting this account was written down decades after the event, the charter had been whisked away and hidden inside the hollow of a massive white oak tree on the Wyllys property, where Captain Joseph Wadsworth is said to have carried it. The tree stood near Hartford, was said to be roughly a thousand years old, and became instantly the symbol of Connecticut's stubborn resistance to royal authority. The Dominion of New England collapsed in sixteen eighty-nine, after the Glorious Revolution had overthrown James the Second.

Connecticut retrieved its charter, resumed self-governance, and the tree became legend. The original Charter Oak fell in a storm on August twenty-first, eighteen fifty-six. Citizens of Hartford reportedly wept in the streets.

From its wood, craftsmen made furniture, gavels, chairs, picture frames, and commemorative objects of every description. A piece of the tree sits today in the collection of the Connecticut Historical Society. Connecticut's state quarter, issued in nineteen ninety-nine, bears the Charter Oak's image.

The tree lives longer than the tree.