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The Hessian Elm: The Revolutionary Memoir of a Tree
by Timothy Collins
[About the author] [Other articles by Timothy Collins ]

Whether as silent witnesses or collateral participants, trees have figured in many prominent events throughout American history: the old oak tree in which colonials hid Connecticut’s charter from the irascible Royal Governor, Sir Edmund Andros, in 1687; the elm tree on Cambridge common under which George Washington took command of the continental army in 1775; or the twisted apple tree in the orchard outside of Appomattox Court House against which Robert E. Lee rested before surrendering the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses Grant in 1865; to name but a few. Remarkably, some historic trees still survive and are quite literally living history — the “witness” trees at Antietam and Gettysburg, and the “Lafayette Sycamore” at Valley Forge among many others.1
If only they could talk, what stories would they tell? The following late nineteenth-century narrative by William F. Andross is just such an account; it is the story of the “Hessian Elm.”2

The author of this story, William F. Andross (1850-1909), had a very active and productive life. A published biography from 1886 tells of him having taken charge of the family farm at age fifteen.3
He was locally educated and described as “being of an investigating turn of mind.” A “practical and profitable” farmer, particularly in tobacco, he frequently contributed to the agricultural journal The New England Homestead on topics of “market gardening and manuring.” Outside of farming he was a salesman of fertilizer, carriages and insurance. For five years he served as secretary of the Connecticut State Agricultural Society and was active in various other agricultural and fraternal organizations throughout his life. Andross was also a man of considerable talent. His gift for descriptive literary narrative is apparent from his story of the Hessian elm, his only known example of literary fiction. He was also an accomplished amateur painter, which may be seen in his painting of the “old house” mentioned in the story (See figure 1). Several other paintings by him, still-lifes and Arcadian landscapes reminiscent of the Hudson Valley School, remain in the family.

While the premise of Andross’ tale of the Hessian elm, a narrative by a tree, is utterly fanciful and readily suggestive of a children’s story, its subject is based entirely on events which are believed to have actually taken place in the late 1770s and early 80s in what is present day South Windsor (then East Windsor), Connecticut.

Like many rural New England towns during the Revolution, East Windsor quartered prisoners of war,4
in particular, British and Hessian (German) soldiers captured during the military campaigns in the summer and early autumn of 1777 in upstate New York.5
Though records do not indicate exactly when or how many prisoners came to East Windsor, local history has preserved several anecdotes regarding their time in the town.6
One story in particular relates how, at the suggestion of General Marquis de Lafayette, who is claimed to have stayed at the East Windsor home of Nathaniel Porter,7
Hessian prisoners of war were employed transplanting trees alongside the highway. Much later, during his last visit to America in 1824, Lafayette supposedly recounted the story of how he held one end of a line and his host’s son, Solomon Porter, held the other end, while the German prisoners set out a row of elm trees corresponding to the line. The trees were set out along the southern end of what is present day Main Street, extending to East Hartford.8

A slightly different version of this story tells of officers from the French army headquarters in East Hartford who would often visit the “distinguished English prisoners” quartered at East Windsor: British Generals Prescott (formerly in command of Rhode Island) and Hamilton, and William Franklin, the former Royal Governor of New Jersey and son of Benjamin Franklin.9
Franklin would host soirees for his more cultured guests behind the Diggins house, under the shade of an elm tree near the Podunk brook. These affairs are said to have featured a particular sour punch that Franklin was fond of, and which the French officers referred to as “One Grand Contradiction”: “a little lemon juice to make it sour, a little sugar to make it sweet, a little rum to make it strong, a little water to make it weak.” It was purportedly at the suggestion of the French officers visiting Franklin that British and Hessian prisoners were employed planting trees along the highway in East Windsor.10

Andross’ story itself presents several historical incongruities as well. Andross gave the spring of 1778 as the date of the planting of the elm trees. If indeed Lafayette did participate as local tradition has it (despite no documented evidence of him ever having been in East Windsor), then this date is very unlikely. The most probable time for the plantings to have taken place would have been September of 1780, when Lafayette was at Hartford (from about the 20th through the 23rd) in conference with Generals Washington and Rochambeau.11
Prior to and after that (3 October and 6 December 1778; 5 May 1780; and 6 December 1781) Lafayette had only passed through the Hartford area en route to or from Boston (N.B., East Windsor was an established stage stop on the Post Road), and he never would have been in the area long enough to indulge himself in such a diversion as planting trees.12
If Lafayette’s participation is in fact apocryphal, which it probably is given his all too brief appearances in the area, then the tree plantings could have taken place at any time between the late fall of 1777 and May of 1783, when all the prisoners of war were released (not withstanding the optimal time to do such a thing, horticulturally speaking). It is also very unlikely that the British and German convention officers who were quartered at East Windsor beginning in the mid-summer of 1781 would have participated in such manual labor as planting trees, though their attendants may have.13

Another inconsistency occurs as the story notes “Christmas Eve, Trenton, Washington.” Here Andross is merely parroting the popular legend that Washington’s surprise attack on the Hessian Barracks at Trenton took place on Christmas Eve. It in fact took place in the early morning hours of December 26, 1776. Finally, Andross describes the Hessian prisoners as wearing “scarlet coats with large buttons on which was . . . the coat of arms of the Duke of Hesse.” Again, Andross appears to be subscribing to a popular misconception that all enemy forces during the Revolution were “redcoats” and that all German troops were from Hesse principalities. While “Hessian” was a common generic reference for the German auxiliaries employed by the British, those which made up Burgoyne’s Canada Army were in fact mostly from Brunswick (Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel), supplemented by a much smaller contingent from Hanover (Hesse-Hanau). Their standard uniform consisted of a dark blue regimental coat lined in red with brass or pewter buttons. Dragoons and Jägers wore uniforms of light blue and green, respectively. Collars, cuffs, lapels, and turnbacks were in the colors of the particular regiment. The only accoutrement to have a coat of arms was the cartouch box plate and the shield of the grenadier cap. Officers also wore a gorget depicting the Hanover horse.14
From these minor historical incongruities, it would appear that Andross primarily relied on local lore, popular legend, and intuition in order to establish the historical setting of his story.

Today, Main Street in South Windsor (incorporated from East Windsor in 1845) bears little resemblance to the classic Currier and Ives portrait of a quaint, tree-lined New England avenue. Over the years, many of the elms set out by the Hessian prisoners succumbed to the elements, both natural and man made, though a few of the trees survived well into the twentieth century, having grown to immense proportions — measuring sixteen to twenty-one feet in circumference.15
In 1938, one of the trees was even selected by the sculptor Lawrence Tenney Stevens to become “the biggest wooden statue in the world,” to be displayed at the 1939 New York World’s Fair (See figure 2).16
Initially titled “Elm Tree God,” the sculpture was intended to symbolize God and featured smaller (ten feet tall) accompanying male and female figures carved out of red eucalyptus, leaning slightly toward the elm tree, signifying their dependence on Him. This theme, however, proved quite controversial from the beginning, eliciting an outcry from those who objected to its representation of God and the perceived senseless use of a treasured living natural resource (let alone one that was historical) as an art medium. Though the general response (no doubt to the frustration of the objectors) was, as one newspaper correspondent put it, “only a tree can make a God,” Stevens nevertheless began to call the sculpture “The Voice.” Even later he came to refer to the tree group as “The Tree of Life.” Its inscription read:

The sculpture also bore a dedication to South Windsor.

Dutch elm disease took a severe toll on the remaining trees, and by the late 1960s they had all but disappeared. Even the elm that had been set out in the front yard of the “old house” had died and was partially cut down by the town in 1969. Before long it too was removed entirely. Today the old “highway,” laid out by order the Connecticut General Assembly in 1672, is no longer particularly tree lined nor is it the center of the community. Only in a few places along its more than four miles are the trees — maples, oaks and sycamores — purposely and regularly aligned along the road, hinting at the grace and stature that the so-called Hessian [E]lms, with their high broad canopies shading the way, once lent to the well traveled path. The center of town was long ago relocated nearby to what was formerly [the] Wapping parish, leaving Main Street a quiet, out of the way thoroughfare. The town’s designated historic district extends for about a mile from the street’s northern end (now a dead end abutting state route 5).18
The “old house,” the Abner Andross homestead built in 1755, was torn down in the 1890s and parts of it were incorporated into the nearby home of Wallace B. Andross, itself torn down in 1979.

Andross’ narrative of the “Hessian Elm” is a quaint tale, colorfully rich in its description of the seasonal transformations that colored the landscape and shaped the life of a small rural New England town during the late eighteenth century. Written from the stand point of a tree, its protagonist reminisces about the world around it with wonder and appreciation for the boundless natural beauty that need only be noticed. Yet it is also aware of its own place as a living entity within that world, itself subject to the forces of nature. For the story’s human elements — the foreign visitor, the old man, the old house — the anthropomorphic elm waxes nostalgic, sentimentally reflecting on defining times during its existence: as a young sapling passively watching the world go by and learning from it; maturing into adolescence and assuming the mantel of guardianship over the old house and its occupants; prospering in the prime of life; and finally, growing old, succumbing to the frailties of age and watching the familiar disappear as the world around it inexorably changes. Interestingly, regarding details of the War (historical incongruities notwithstanding) — Washington’s Christmas attack on the Hessian Barracks at Trenton and the Revolution’s aim of American independence — the very event which brought all the elements of this story together, the elm appears naively disinterested (as perhaps a tree would), treating them almost as an insignificant rumor. In the end, despite a sense of mortality, the aged elm expresses optimism and a continued commitment to carry on the charge that was entrusted to it so long ago by that foreign soldier with the “kind face and manner.”

The story of the Hessian Elm exemplifies the creative spirit of the late nineteenth century. Before the era of instant entertainment, creative arts and crafts held even greater importance in American society; and many gifted (and not-so-gifted) amateurs plied their talents at such artistic expressions as decorative arts, music making, painting, and writing. Writing in particular was a widely popular venue among amateurs, who eagerly lent their hands to the genres then in vogue. Andross’s story of the Hessian Elm is just such an example. It adeptly brings together the descriptive realism of the seasonal changes that effect the landscape of a small Connecticut River Valley town with the exoticism of foreign visitors and historical setting of the Revolutionary War to create a romantic historical fiction written from the viewpoint of a tree. If any aspect of this story’s romance could be true, it should be that of the young soldier held prisoner in a far away land who transcends the cruelties of war by befriending his hosts and by merely planting a tree, creates a lasting memory. Alas, the distance of time has erased all evidence of the story of South Windsor’s so called Hessian Elms and relegated it to the fine print of crumbling history books and dusty genealogies, where it nonetheless remains a treasured facet of local history. [But] it is the story of one elm in particular, the Hessian Elm, that yet lives, literally given life, through a charming example of late nineteenth century American folk literature and a remarkable painting by an obscure and unassuming Connecticut farmer.

Figure 1. Painting by William F. Andross of the old house (Abner Andross homestead, built ca.1755) mentioned in the story of the Hessian elm. Courtesy of Mrs. Charlotte Andross Collins, South Windsor, Connecticut. Photo by Greg Ashton.

Figure 2. “Tree of Life” sculpture by Lawrence Tenney Stevens for the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Photo courtesy of the Lawrence Tenney Stevens Trust.

The author wishes to express his sincerest thanks to Charlotte Andross Collins, Terry Martin, John Fabion and the Lawrence Tenney Stevens Trust, Claus Reuter, Greg Ashton, and Emily Kalmbach Collins.

Timothy Collins holds advanced degrees in music history and musicology and doctorate in historical performance. Born and raised in South Windsor, Connecticut, Dr. Collins is the son of Charlotte Andross Collins and the great, great grandson of William F. Andross. He has resided in the Connecticut Western Reserve (Cleveland) with his wife Emily and cat Grendel for the past fourteen years.

1 The National Registry of Historic Trees lists more than 2,500 famous and historic trees in the United States. See http://www.historictrees.org.

2 Courtesy of Charlotte Andross Collins of South Windsor, Connecticut. This story has been edited for clarity.

3 This printed biography, featuring an engraved portrait of Andross and a penciled attribution of 1886, was formerly attached to the original typed and handwritten manuscript of the story of the Hessian Elm. It presumably was clipped from the pages of the New England Homestead. This biographical précis is corroborated by a similar biography appearing in J. A. Spalding ed., Illustrated Popular Biography of Connecticut (Hartford: Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company, 1891). 177.

4 During the Revolution prisoners of war were not necessarily held en mass in camps or barracks. In an effort to avoid stressing already limited resources, Congress encouraged the hiring out of prisoners of war to rural populations. Those families who were willing would take in as many soldiers as they could manage and in return, the soldiers would pay for their keep by lending out their services to local farmers or by plying their pre-war trade. Among those hired out, artisans and skilled tradesmen were particularly sought after, especially the Germans, who had a reputation for being industrious workers. Because skilled trades commanded exceptionally high wages in America, it was possible for conscientious and industrious prisoners to lead a relatively comfortable life while in captivity. On the other hand, officers, who were professional soldiers and thus had no civilian trade, were generally paroled to a place of their choosing (paying their own board), having agreed on their honor as officers and gentlemen to the conditions of limited mobility and abstinence from any subversive talk or activity. But above all, furloughed and paroled prisoners were subject to recall by authorities and remained subject to military codes of conduct as well as local laws and ordinance, barring which they risked returning to camp or barracks or worse, incarceration as a criminal. See Charles Metzger, S. J., The Prisoner in the American Revolution (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1971), 191-201; Gregory T. Edgar, “Liberty or Death!” The Northern Campaigns in the American Revolutionary War (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1994), 353-379.

5 An accurate count of prisoners taken by American forces during the tide-turning campaigns in upstate New York in 1777 is difficult to ascertain because period accounts rarely distinguish between casualties and troops (and Tories) captured or missing, nor do they take into account the capture or loss of Indian scouts, drivers, officer’s servants, sutlers and various other camp elements. Additionally, American forces in the field took in enemy deserters and defectors on an almost daily basis. The best estimate places the number of prisoners taken at between 6,000 and 8,000. The Connecticut Courant of November 4, 1777, however, put the figure closer to 10,000. But the nearly 5800 prisoners taken at the capitulation at Saratoga were unique. At his surrender to General Horatio Gates on 17 October 1777, General Burgoyne bound his army in a “convention” which outlined the conditions of the surrender as well as certain aspects of their subsequent captivity. By replacing the term “capitulation” with “convention,” Burgoyne was able to retain the honor of having not surrendered, hence, his troops (known as the “convention army,” “conventionalists,” etc.) were technically not prisoners of war and could not be treated as such. The disputes which naturally ensued between the British and Congress over the conditions of the convention and other minutiae, ultimately led Congress to officially declare the convention troops prisoners of war on 17 March, 1781. See William M. Dabney, After Saratoga: The Story of the Convention Army (Albuquerque, NM: The University of New Mexico Press, 1954), 3, 15-26, 81-82; Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, ed. Worthington C. Ford et al. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1904-37), 19: 274. See also Edward J. Lowell, The Hessians and other German Auxiliaries of Great Britain in the Revolutionary War,” (1884; Williamstown, MA: Corner House, 1970).

6 Henry Reed Stiles, The History and Genealogies of Ancient Windsor, Connecticut (1859; Rockport Maine: Picton Press, 2000), 1: 661-662, 673-677; Horace Gillette, “Letters on the History of South Windsor,” (undated typescript of articles originally published in The Hartford Times in 1857 and 1858, author’s collection), 15-19, 20-24. The convention prisoners were not the first nor only prisoners of war to come to East Windsor, as Stiles (History, 1: 673ff) implies. British and Hessian soldiers under Lt. Colonel Breymann taken prisoner at Bennington came to East Windsor in the fall of 1777. Gillette, “Letters,” 22.

Both Gillette (“Letters,” 15-19) and Stiles (History, 661) erroneously claim that Lafayette had briefly established headquarters at East Windsor in the Spring of 1781. Lafayette spent most of the month. of February 1781 in headquarters at New Windsor, New York (just south of Newburgh, on the Hudson River), not at East Windsor, Connecticut. Furthermore, J. Bennett Nolan, Lafayette in America, Day by Day (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1934) makes no mention whatsoever of East Windsor with regard to Lafayette. Lafayette, however, did frequently travel through the area on route to and from Boston, and, with French troops under General comte de Rochambeau, headquartered at Little’s Tavern in East Hartford, he may indeed have stayed at the East Windsor home of Nathaniel Porter on at least one occasion. Nolan places Lafayette in the Hartford area on ten occasions between 1777 and 1784. Nolan, Lafayette, 148-156, 319; see also Joseph O. Goodwin, East Hartford: Its History and Traditions (Hartford: Case, Lockwood and Brainard, 1879), 88-91.

8 Gillette, “Letters,” 15, 17.

9 Franklin was held at East Windsor in the Home of Lieutenant Joseph Diggins (no longer extant) from December 1777 until the end of October 1778 when he was exchanged for Delaware Governor John McKinley. Shiela L. Skemp, William Franklin: Son of a Patriot, Servant of a King (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) 224; Stiles 1:660; Journals of the Continental Congress, 12: 909-12.

10 Goodwin, East Hartford, 88-91; Gillette, “Letters,” 20-24.

11 Nolan, Lafayette, 128.

12 Ibid., 84, 94, 104, 211.

13 See Jesse Root to Jonathan Trumbull, Sr., in Smith, Paul H., et al., eds., Letters of Delegates to Congress; Volume 17, March 1, 1781 - August 31, 1781 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1976- 2000), 87-88; and Samuel Huntington to George Washington, Letters of Delegates, 268. Stiles (History 1:674-675) gives a transcript of Governor Trumbull’s order transferring convention officers to Connecticut, as well as a roster of the 19 British officers (with 43 servants) and 43 Hessian officers (with 92 servants) involved. The convention officers would become known for more mischievous activities while quartered at East Windsor, namely, gambling and horse racing. See Stiles, History, 1:676-677; Gillette “Letters” 15-16, 22, 30.

14 Clause Reuter, email communications with the author, August-September 2003. C.f. Claus Reuter, The Brunswick Light Infantry Battalion “von Barner” 1776 – 1783 (The German-Canadian Museum of Applied History, 1995); John Mollo, Uniforms of the American Revolution (New York: Sterling Pub. Co., 1991), 29-30.

15 Gillette “Letters” 15.

16 John Lacy, “Memories carved from a tree,” The Hartford Courant (12 April 1989), D1, D5. Charlotte Andross Collins remembers that the elm in front of the “old house,” Andross’s Hessian Elm, was one of those initially considered by Stevens for his sculpture. The elm ultimately selected by Stevens stood at station 31 (King Street). (Charlotte Andross Collins, telephone conversations with the author, August 2003.) An article in a booklet titled The Massachusetts Mutual Ashlar (June, 1939), tells how Stevens came to choose this particular tree in 1938: “Mr. Stevens and his wife, also an artist, spent long, busy days and drove thousands of miles to find a suitable elm - as the whiteness of this wood was a part of the design. They also required a tree whose limbs lent themselves to the figure already visualized. Finally the tree was found, almost one hundred and fifty feet high and sound enough to have survived the hurricane which was at its height right where the tree stood.” John Fabion, Lawrence Tenney Stevens Trust, e-mail communications with the author, 23-29 August 2003.

17 Stevens, assisted by his wife and local workmen carved the tree in situ at South Windsor. The 25- ton sculpture was barged down the Connecticut River and across Long Island Sound to the fair site at Flushing Meadows, New York. Stevens had intended the tree sculpture to be permanent and was shocked to find out that it had disappeared when he visited the site after the Second World War. Numerous inquiries over the years have failed to find any trace of the sculpture. Fabion, e-mail.

18 See Doris Burgdorf, A Country Mile: A Guided Tour through South Windsor’s Designated Historic District (South Windsor, Ct.: South Windsor Historical Society, Inc., 1995).

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