Just across the street from the Cedar of Lebanon (which I previously wrote about), is a monument to a couple of New York City’s great lost trees. A craggy stone pyramid reads “FOX OAKS” on one side, and on the other has this brief explanation: “Here stood Fox Oaks beneath whose branches George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends, preached, June 7, 1672.”
Few in Flushing would have needed to be told who George Fox was in the 17th century. The area was a Quaker stronghold, helped by the presence of John Bowne who hosted Fox that summer day for a sermon. The Quakers were persecuted by Peter Stuyvesant, governor of New Netherlands. Yet when Fox, the founder of the Religious Society of Friends in England, arrived, there was such a crowd they could not fit inside Bowne’s farmhouse (which still stands nearby), so they moved outside to the shade of the oak trees.
You can see an interpretation of the trees in life through the 1825 lithograph by Charles Motte I’ve included above (from the New York Public Library). Only a few decades after that print was made, both arbors would be gone. One fell in 1841, the other in 1863, through a combination of development and old age. Josiah Whitney Barston in his 1893 "The Trees of Flushing" address (tree obsession is a longstanding hobby in NYC) remarked that they were “probably sacrificed to the spirit of progress which laid out that beautiful street. The grading of the' surface doubtless disturbed the roots and led to their premature decay.”
The stone marker was installed in 1907 in front of the large apartment building on what’s now called Bowne Street. Perhaps the ghosts of history might feel some justice that Peter Stuyvesant’s Pear Tree mowed down by a 19th-century carriage in the East Village only gets a small plaque, and the oaks a rugged rock. Although I’d bet that few who walk by the marker would immediately think of trees with its mountainous angles.
Perhaps a better tribute is this florid poem written after the loss of the oak in 1841 by Samuel B. Parsons (yes, the very Parsons who had the nursery from which the cedar of Lebanon originates!):
The ancient oak lies prostrate now,
Its limbs embrace the sod,
Where in the Spirit's strength and might,
Our pious fathers trod;
Where, underneath its spreading arms,
And by its shadows broad,
Clad in simplicity and truth,
They met to worship God.
No stately pillars round them rose,
No dome was reared on high;
The oaks their only columns were,
Their roof the arching sky;
No organ's deep-toned notes arose,
Or vocal songs were heard;
Their music was the passing wind,
Or song of forest bird.
And as His Spirit reached their hearts,
By man's lips speaking now,
A holy fire was in their eye,
Pure thought upon their brow;
And, while in silence deep and still,
Their souls all glowing were
With heartfelt peace and joy and love,
They felt that God was there.
Those pure and simple-minded men
Have now all passed away,
And of the scenes in which they moved,
These only relics lay:
And soon the last surviving oak,
In its majestic pride,
Will gather up its failing limbs
And wither at its side.
Then guard with care its last remains,
Now that its race is run;
No sacrilegious hand should touch
The forest's noblest one.
And when the question may be asked,
Why that old trunk is there?
'Tis but the place in olden time
God's holiest altars were.
