Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1895 — THE BIG ELM IN SAVANNA, ILL. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE BIG ELM IN SAVANNA, ILL.

W !• Twenty-three Feet end Nine Inches in Circnoiferencei end la Bnppoaed to Be Three Hnndred and Thirty-live Years Old.

On the banks of the Mississippi in Savanna, Ili., stands an elm tree that la the pride and wonder of Carroll County. It is probably the largest in Illinois, If not In the United States, taking circumference, height and spread of branches into consideration. The famous elm of Boston, which was destroyed in 1870, was twenty-two feet in circumference at the base, while the elm of Savanna is twentythree feet and nine inches. Its height is eighty feet, and the spread of itß branches shades an nrea of 100 feet in diameter, it was a large tree when the present city of Savannn was laid out in 1828. Indeed, if De Candolle, the Swiss botanist, was correct in placing the age of the elm

at 335 years, this hoary giant must havt sprouted soon after Do Soto explorod ths Mississippi in 1542. The figure of a matt in the trunk view serves a double purpose. It illustrates the size of tho tree as compared with tho body of a large man, and at the samo time shows the past of the nation in the person of one of tho oldest pioneors, Pliny Taylor, who has lived under the shadow of the big elm for fiftyfive years. To D. L. Bowen, the oldest living pioneer, who coma Jo Savanna in 1836, is duo the predlt of preserving the big olm in later years. Curiously enough, tliere is no scar or mark upon this tree to show that it has ever been struck by lightning, although trees all around it have been shivered repeatedly.