enshrining it as a sort of guardian genius of the place, the living
witness of progress in Cambridge from the first feeble beginnings.

The life of the tree, however, probably does not date farther back than
the last quarter of the seventeenth century. In its early history there
was nothing to distinguish it from its peers of the greenwood. When the
surrounding forest fell beneath the axe of the woodman, the trees
conspicuous for size and beauty escaped the general destruction; among
these was the Washington Elm; but there is no evidence that it surpassed
its companions.

Tradition states that another large elm once stood on the northwest
corner of the Common, under which the Reverend George Whitefield, the
Wesleyan evangelist, preached in 1745. Others claim that it was the
Washington Elm under which the sermon was delivered. The two trees stood
near each other, and the hearers were doubtless scattered under each.
But the great elm was destined to look down upon scenes that stirred the
blood even more than the vivid eloquence of a Whitefield. Troublous
times had come, and the mutterings of discontent were voicing themselves
in more and more articulate phrase. The old tree must have been privy
to a great deal of treasonable talk--at first, whispered with many
misgivings, under the cover of darkness; later, in broad daylight,
fearlessly spoken aloud. The smoke of bonfires, in which blazed the
futile proclamations of the King, was wafted through its branches.
It saw the hasty burial, by night, of the Cambridge men who were slain
upon the nineteenth of April, 1775; it saw the straggling arrival of
the beaten, but not disheartened, survivors of Bunker Hill; it saw the
Common--granted to the town as a training-field--suddenly transformed
to a camp, under General Artemas Ward, commander-in-chief of the
Massachusetts troops.