Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/48

 28 Sloan's Architectural Review and Builders' Journal. [July, The porch and pantry projected about eight or nine feet from the front, and the front garden fence about seven feet further. Then there was a sharp little declivit}' to the river road. The road itself about 30 feet wide. On the oppo- site, or river side of the road, stood the Treaty Tree, about five feet from the beaten track. This would place the Elm 50-1 to 55 feet from the mansion.* Though quite a small boy when it occurred, Mr. Vandusen recollects very well Lai. Hill's retort, and the fall of the men in the dust, as detailed in Mr. Eggleton's letter. This was after the tree had blown down. Mr. Vandusen gives the exact position of the trunk of the Great Elm, thus : The ground formerly belonging to his father, Matthew, Sr., and now to him- self, bounded by Eyre's line, the same with the upper rough fence of the monu- ment, from Eyre's line to Hanover street, is divided into seven equal lots of 21 feet 4 inches front on Beach street, as far as they will run that width, the allowance under or over being in the front of the seventh lot. He knows that the tree stood in the third lot from Eyre's — line, near the easterly line of the fourth lot. The eastern side of the tree was near the middle of the third lot, the western side very close to the fourth lot.f This brings the exact centre of the butt of the tree on an angle of 90 degrees, 60 feet westerly, or down Beach street from Eyre's line Washington Yandusen's estimate of the diameter of the Great Elm is five to six feet. There was an ancient buttonwood, standing a few feet easterly from Eyre's line, on ground now occupied by Edward V. Gorgas, No. 1325 Beach street, as a wood-yard, place its centre somewhere on the line parallel with and sixty feet westerly from Eyre's line. The difference is not quite three thicknesses of the trunk itself, i. e. eight feet as given by Watson. t Here again is a confirmation of the eight feet diameter. The middle of the lot would be 10 feet 8 inches from either line, 2 feet S inches may be considered equivalent to "very close." This deducted from 10 feet 8 inches leaves 8 feet as the thickness of the trunk. whose stump yet remains in the earth. Mr. Vandusen, Mr. Eggleton and my- self, went to visit the stump. It was not visible, being piled entirely over with cord wood ; but Mr. John Hans- burry, the young man in charge of Mr. Gorgas' office, undertook to show us the exact range of the centre of the stump, which measured 53 feet parallel with Eyre's line to Beach street. This but- tonwood was a large and particularly marked tree, from the fact that Manuel EyreJ had put on it, before Washington Vandnsen's time, a bell to mark time for the neighboring ship carpenters, and Mr. Vandusen's recollection is very clear, that the Great Elm stood a little further away from the Beach street line than the buttonwood did. Making tins allowance at 55 feet, we obtained by the tape line, 12 ft. s. s. w. 1 + s. (surveyor's bearing, s. 20° west,) from the apex of the monumental obelisk, planted in the north- eastern corner of the j^ard, at the same distance, say 6J feet, rectangular, from Eyre's line and from Beach street. This memorial stands in the centre of an enclo- sure about 12^ feet square. There is a trifling element of uncertainty here, from the present obscuration of the stump of the buttonwood ; but this could soon be disclosed, when absolutely necessary to locate the centre of the Great Elm with exactitude. At any rate, it never has been marked upon a published plan with the least approach to its present accuracy, besides the accompanying means of des- ignating it with certainty, for years to come. From a period long before the vacation of the river roati, and the removal of the Great Elm, to the present instant, the ownership of this ground has remained in the one family, passing merety from Matthew Vandusen, Sr., to his son Washington, who himself gave me this information, accompanying it with genial remarks, and with chalk J Mr. Tees says Colonel Eyre of the Revolution, brother of the elder, and uncle of the younger Manuel, and father of Franklin Eyre, put the bell in the buttonwood.
 * Mr. Tees holds stoutly to thirty feet. Both gentlemen