The Hemlock Tree

Near the year 1200 the seed fell to the ground among the hardwoods, sprouted, and began to emerge from the ground as a small green sprout.  A young Mohawk smiled as he passed by and noted the small green growth rising from the forest floor.  Four hundred years later the white men arrived from the direction of the rising sun in their tall boats, alit on the western shore of the big water and settled in to stay.

Another two hundred years passed before the first of the white men came to settle where the 100 foot tall green conifer yet stood.  Then, before 1820, Samuel Qua arrived and began to clear the forest away to plant crops in its stead.  Sam’s daughter Hannah married Moses Fisk, and by 1860 they were living in the home that Sam built.  The lone tree still remained where Sam had left it when he stripped the woods from his acreage.  In 1894 a young Irishman named Joseph Walsh purchased the land from the aging Moses and Hannah.  He rested many a day under the boughs of the evergreen tree which yet stood along side his field.  Stones removed from the fields had been piled in a row making a fencerow where the tree stood.  In 1934 Joe died and left the land, including the tree to his sister, but she never lived there.  Two years later she sold the land to Byron Havens and his wife Anna.  They remained in charge of the land for ten years before passing its care on to Bob and Arvilla Turner in 1946.  Lawrence and Patricia Lawton purchased the land in 1972 and resold it to his brother Leo and Nora Lawton in 1976.  They have lived on the land until the present, and yet that evergreen stands in mute existence, a testimony to the fact some things change very slowly in our world.

The Mohawks and whites alike used to make medicinal teas from the Hemlock bark as well as soothing ointments for the healing of burns and sores.  Tannin, an extract from the bark, was used in the tanning of animal hides for the making of clothing.  The old Hemlock tree is now some 800 years old, and a lot of life has passed by it while it has stood.  Where once the local land was covered with forest, much of it Hemlock, today only an occasional one stands.  This particular one is only a couple of hundred feet back of my house.