Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 309, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 December 1916 — Thinks Tree On His Farm Was More Than 200 Years Old. [ARTICLE]

Thinks Tree On His Farm Was More Than 200 Years Old.

H. L. Wortley is the owner of the farm known as the Hugh Coen farm, in Newton township near the Curtis Creek school house. Mr. Wortley purchased this farm from Benjamin L. Sayler some five years ago. Not long ago he cut down a tree in the grove east of the house and near the Curtis Creek bridge. The rings on tne stump and body of this tree were counted by Mr. Wortley and his neighbor, Sidney Johnson, and the number was found to be about two hundred and fifteen. This would indicate that the tree was about 215 years old. This is a long, long time and if this tree could tell its life story it would certainly be an interesting one. • ■ __ The red man, if he was here, little dreamed of the coming of the white man. This tree was waving its branches in the pure air of a country wholly within the lap of nature. The red-man and the few wild, animals may have paid homage to its shade in summer or may have claimed its protection during the severe winter. It was more than a century old before it could have been visited by a white man. It heeded not . the last settlements of the colonies along the eastern coast, the revolutionary war, the adoption of the constitution, the birth of this great nation, the war of 1812, and the many other interesting happenings previous to the birth of Indiana. It was not greatly concerned with the creation of the Northwest Territory and its provisions forbidding the shackle of slavery to be put upon its fellow inhabitants. It was in 1816 that it first became a part of one of the great states of the United States. For h hundred years it has waved its branches ;n the pure air of a commonwealth that has contributed tremendously to the onward rush of civilization. It has stood firmly for all that is best in the organization of the county of Jasper and the township of Newton. It lived to celebrate the Indiana Centennial in 1916 and it has now returned to mother earth. The old tree had a mission and for two long centuries it was satisfied to simply contribute its part in God’s field of nature/