The Marshall Beech Tree

On the campus of what is now Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, a beech tree once stood as the campus's living symbol. The marker placed here gave the tree its own voice, written in the first person: I am part and parcel of the growth and history of Marshall College. Under my branches I have gathered great personages, educators, philosophers, doctors, lawyers, musicians, and artists.

Marshall was founded in eighteen thirty-seven, named for Chief Justice John Marshall, and spent its early decades as a small academy before becoming a state college. The beech tree, already ancient by the time the marker was cast, represented the idea that an institution's identity is rooted in something older than its buildings. Marshall University gained national recognition after the devastating nineteen seventy plane crash that killed the football team, but the tree and its marker tell an older story of the campus.