Folklore
The Eliot Oak
IN that part of Boston formerly constituting the town of Brighton, and still farther back forming a precinct of Cam- bridge, there is a pleasant locality called Oak Square. It was so named on account of the old oak-tree which stood there, and which is probably better known as…
IN that part of Boston formerly constituting the town of Brighton, and still farther back forming a precinct of Cam- bridge, there is a pleasant locality called Oak Square. It was so named on account of the old oak-tree which stood there, and which is probably better known as…
Work
- Type
- folk narrative
- Creator
- Samuel Adams Drake
- Created, as stated
- 1884
The tale
IN that part of Boston formerly constituting the town of Brighton, and still farther back forming a precinct of Cam- bridge, there is a pleasant locality called Oak Square. It was so named on account of the old oak-tree which stood there, and which is probably better known as the Eliot Oak. This gigantic relic of the primeval forest was in its day the largest and the oldest tree of its species growing within the four boundaries of the old Bay State, and it was officially declared to be so by a scientific commission which was charged with making a botanical survey of the State. The declaration is made that " It had probably passed its prime centuries before the first English voice was heard on the shores of Massachusetts Bay." Its circumference at the ground was given at twenty- five feet and nine inches, or two feet more than that of the Great Elm of Boston. Through decay the trunk became hollow at the base, furnishing a cavity large enough to serve as a hid- ing-place for the schoolboys who played under tlie shade of its wide-spreading branches. The enormous weight of these, with their foliage, was at last supported by a mere shell of trunk, and as every gale threatened to lay…
- Narrative type
- origin story
- Set at
- Boston and eastern Massachusetts
- First attestation in print
- Samuel Adams Drake, A Book of New England Legends and Folk Lore in Prose and Poetry (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1884) (1884)
Tellings
A tale told several ways is one record and several tellings. Each is given whole, with its teller named — or recorded as unattributed where the collector left them unnamed, which is itself a fact about the collection.
As printed in Samuel Adams Drake (1884)
Told by unattributed — the collector names no informant · collected by Samuel Adams Drake · 1884 · Boston and eastern Massachusetts
IN that part of Boston formerly constituting the town of Brighton, and still farther back forming a precinct of Cam- bridge, there is a pleasant locality called Oak Square. It was so named on account of the old oak-tree which stood there, and which is probably better known as the Eliot Oak. This gigantic relic of the primeval forest was in its day the largest and the oldest tree of its species growing within the four boundaries of the old Bay State, and it was officially declared to be so by a scientific commission which was charged with making a botanical survey of the State. The declaration is made that " It had probably passed its prime centuries before the first English voice was heard on the shores of Massachusetts Bay." Its circumference at the ground was given at twenty- five feet and nine inches, or two feet more than that of the Great Elm of Boston. Through decay the trunk became hollow at the base, furnishing a cavity large enough to serve as a hid- ing-place for the schoolboys who played under tlie shade of its wide-spreading branches. The enormous weight of these, with their foliage, was at last supported by a mere shell of trunk, and as every gale threatened to lay it low, to the regret of thou- sands, the brave old oak was through a hard necessity compelled to bite the dust. By an order of the town it was cut down in May, 1855. A little west of this tree was the former site of the wigwam of Waban, Chief of the Nonantums, and he must often have rested under its generous shade. The old Indian trail extended
Samuel Adams Drake, A Book of New England Legends and Folk Lore in Prose and Poetry (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1884)
Related records
Identity
- Identifier
- urn:lemay:boston:entity:the-eliot-oak
- Canonical URL
- https://boston.fyi/work/the-eliot-oak
- As JSON
- https://boston.fyi/work/the-eliot-oak.json
- Version
- 1 · last changed 2 September 2026
Provenance
- Source
- Drake, A Book of New England Legends and Folk Lore (1884) — source of record
- Licence
- Public domain — published before 1929 (public_domain)
- Retrieved
- 2 September 2026
- Source identifier
- THE ELIOT OAK
- Attribution
- Samuel Adams Drake
- Rights as stated
- Published 1884 and in the public domain in the United States.
Transform ladder
| # | Operation | Description | Tool |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | fetch | retrieved the full text of the collection from its public-domain holding institution | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |
| 2 | segment | split the volume into chapters at its own printed headings; the first occurrence of a heading opens the chapter and later occurrences are the running header, which is discarded | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |
| 3 | corroborate | matched each heading against the book's own table of contents and took the index's spelling as the title; a heading the index does not carry was refused as a caption, a byline, or scanner noise | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |
| 4 | filter | retained the chapters that name a Boston-area place, by the tale's own words | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |
| 5 | normalize | collapsed the scan's line breaks; not one word of the telling was altered, added, or removed | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |