One of the oldest and most revered residents of Montgomery County died during Hurricane Helene at the age of … well, nobody’s really sure.
Some trees reveal their ages in death, or sometimes in core samples taken during life. The sugar maple that stood at Historic Smithfield, an 18th-century residence that was home to a key figure of the Revolutionary War and was the birthplace of not one but two governors of Virginia, has so far refused to give up its secrets.
There were never any formal measurements of the tree, so all anyone knew was that it was big and old, just not exactly how big or how old. Michael Hudson, Smithfield’s executive director, guesses it was about 80 feet tall.
A few years ago, “we attempted to do some core samples,” Hudson says. “We got maybe 7 or 8 inches into the trunk and the core sample was coming out kind of punky.” That’s actually a scientific term that roughly translates into “squishy.” The tree was rotting from the inside out. There was no way to count the rings.
Much like humans in declining health, the tree kept living anyway — until sometime on Sept. 27, when the remnants of Hurricane Helene blew through with gusts up to 60 mph and snapped it in two. The strength of the winds may not have been as big a factor as their direction.
“One important distinction about the winds with Helene is that most of the gusts were from the east during the hardest part,” says Cardinal’s weather journalist Kevin Myatt. “Trees here are naturally braced for strong westerly winds, because those happen regularly with winter cold fronts and summer squall lines.” It was likely those easterly winds that brought the tree down.
On the Saturday after the storm, Aaliyah Cooke, a Virginia Tech history major who works at Smithfield, went to check on the house. “I knew we wouldn’t have any guests but I wanted to protect the house,” she said. She figured there might be some branches and other debris that would have to be picked up. When she went out into the garden, she didn’t notice that the tree was down at first. “I just remember a lot of space in the sky,” she said. “A lot of blue space. Then I glanced over and the tree was just covering the ground, just gone. I thought, I just hope that’s not the tree I think it is.”
It was.
The great sugar maple that had seen so much history was gone. “I was very upset because it had witnessed so much history,” Cooke says. “I never thought I’d be so upset about the tree.” But how much history had it seen?
Hudson said he had heard of a Virginia Tech study that estimated the tree germinated between 1711 and 1761, but he hasn’t been able to find such a report. That would mean the tree was possibly 263 years old and maybe 313 years old. Jamie King led the urban forestry team at Virginia Tech before becoming director of coaching and consulting with American Forests. He’s skeptical the tree was that old. “Big trees often get a lot of attention and can build a lot of lore,” he says. In the absence of any documentation, he’s hesitant to estimate an age for the tree. Sugar maples, though, do live a long time. The U.S. Forest Service says they can live 300 to 400 years, and some have been known to live for 500.
Does it really matter exactly how old the tree was? “It doesn’t have to be 300 years old to be special,” King says.
And this tree was special to Smithfield, although maybe not as special as a white oak on the property that came to be known as the Merry Oak, and which came down during a storm in May 2021. That tree was reputed to be 500 years old, although the equivalent of a tree autopsy found it to be closer to 280 years old, which means it was still old enough to predate the Smithfield estate that grew up around it. “We did prove the Merry tree stood when elk and bison still roamed the grounds,” King says.
That tree was there when Col. William Preston — a leading figure in the American Revolution in the western part of Virginia — started building the house in 1772, and it was there when future governor John Floyd was born there in 1806 and when another future governor, James Preston, was born there in 1816. It was there before our nation was born; it was also there at a time when we enslaved fellow humans, which is what gave the Merry Tree its name. This was the tree around which Smithfield’s enslaved laborers gathered for moments of celebration. “The white population called it the Merriment Oak,” Hudson says. “It’s where the enslaved population had weddings, dancing, preaching — any red-letter event that came along to break up the horrors of enslavement probably took place under that tree.”
The sugar maple nearby apparently did not attract such events but, due to its age, came to be dubbed the Witness Maple because it witnessed lots of history, even if we’re not sure how much.
Over the years, the tree was tapped for its sap, which was boiled down into maple syrup. Today, we think of maple syrup-making in Virginia as something limited to Highland County and Grayson County, both of which have annual festivals built around their maple products. In a previous time, Virginians throughout the mountains tapped their sugar maples. Just last week, The Voice, a weekly newspaper in Buchanan and Tazewell counties, ran a historical piece in which it quoted a New York Sun article from 1915 that said people there made sugar from the trees every spring.
As sugar maples go, this one at Smithfield was big and revered, but there are others that are bigger. The Virginia Big Tree project, administered by Virginia Tech, says the state’s “champion” sugar maple had been a specimen in Giles County that towered 84 feet and was 270 inches around, making it somewhat taller but a lot fatter than the Smithfield maple. Alas, that Giles County tree, which was out in the woods, came down sometime between 2019 and 2022. The national champion sugar maple is in Charlemont, Massachusetts; that tree is 115 feet tall.
While the Witness Maple at Smithfield may have never been an official national champion, or even a state champion, other trees in Virginia are. A database maintained by American Forests lists 92 trees in Virginia that are deemed the biggest of their species in the country. That’s more than any other state in the country. Florida has 86. These rankings change every so often as trees grow, get remeasured and, inevitably, die. Fincastle had a good-natured rivalry with Frederick, Maryland, over their honey locust trees, which traded the national champion ranking back and forth over the years. The Maryland tree died in 2019, leaving the great honey locust tree beside the Fincastle United Methodist Church as the undisputed champion.
Big can be (and is) measured various ways — a combination of height, trunk circumference and the spread of the crown. American Forests has a point system that computes a score for each tree. Obviously different species come in different shapes and sizes, so some have an advantage over others.
Age may be more understandable, although harder to determine with a living tree (or, sometimes, even a dead one if the tree rings have gone mushy with rot).
The oldest tree in Virginia is believed to be a certain water tupelo along Fountains Creek in Greensville County, whose age is estimated at 604 years (give or take 100). If that’s so, that means it germinated about 1420, more than a half-century before Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
According to Monumental Trees, Virginia has at least four trees that started growing before the settlement of Jamestown in 1607.
Those pre-Colonial trees:
- That water tupelo in Greensville County.
- A white oak near Warfield in Brunswick County that’s estimated at 524 years (give or take 100), which would put its germination at 1500.
- A Southern Live Oak at Fort Monroe in Hampton that’s estimated at 484 years (give or take 50), which would put its germination at 1540.
- A Northern White Cedar at Boiling Spring in Alleghany County that’s estimated at 424 years (give or take 100), which would put its germination at 1600.
That same Monumental Trees database lists eight others that, if the age estimates are correct, sprouted after European settlement began but before those Colonists declared themselves independent in 1775. Those other eight trees include one apiece in Charlotte County, Chesapeake, Chesterfield County, Gloucester County, Page County and Petersburg, and two in Richmond. Keep in mind that these are the ones we know about; who knows what remains hidden out there in the woods?
As for the Witness Maple that came down in Montgomery County, it may be years before we get a chance to figure out its true age, if then. The top part that came down has been taken away to Phoenix Hardwoods in Floyd County to be turned into a desk for use at Smithfield. “That will be a very meaningful thing to have,” Hudson says.
The severed trunk that remains will stand a while longer yet. The plan is to let it stay to become habitat for whatever wildlife wants to make a home in its crevasses. By the time that trunk finally rots away, it may be impossible to count the rings in the trunk. The Witness Maple may have seen a lot over the centuries, but it will take some secrets to its grave.
Want more history?
If the names Smithfield and William Preston sound familiar, it may be because you read about them in one of the stories in our Cardinal 250 series that features little-known episodes of Virginia’s history in the period leading up to the Declaration of Independence. We wrote about Preston and Smithfield in our story about how Montgomery County was a hotbed of Tory sympathasizers who wanted to remain loyal to the king. You can catch up on all those stories on our Cardinal 250 page.
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