One of Maryland’s oldest citizens may just be a roadside tree in Ruxton— a majestic white oak (Quercus alba) — that has stood sentinel for nearly four centuries alongside what is now Bellona Avenue.
Earlier this month, my Baltimore Fishbowl colleague Dan Rodricks wrote a touching eulogy to a Mount Vernon Place landmark — the last standing elm that had resided there since 1922 — and collapsed last year during a rainstorm.
“Most of us take them for granted, or only notice them when they’re gone,” he wrote.
Since 1977, Joseph M. Coale III, 81, author, historian, preservationist and a Ruxton resident, has been an outspoken and protective advocate for what is known as the Ruxton Liberty Tree or Ruxton Oak.
Coale’s interest in the tree was heightened when he was researching and writing “Middling Planters of Ruxton 1694-1850,” which was published in 1996 by what is now the Maryland Center for History and Culture.
The granddaddy of Maryland trees for years was the 460-year-old Wye Oak in Talbot County on the Eastern Shore.
It lost its national championship ranking when it was felled by a violent thunderstorm in June 2002.
Since 1941, the Wye Oak had been the official State Tree of Maryland when the General Assembly gave it that designation and established Wye Oak State Park.
But unlike its former cousin, which was held together with five miles of cable and concrete patches and political will, the Ruxton Liberty Tree is free of such indignities and stands straight and tall with a voluminous canopy that blocks out the sunlight.
Its dimensions are impressive
It rises to nearly 200 feet and has a circumference of 19 feet, which makes it truly a noteworthy sentinel and one not to be ignored.
The tree is sited on a slight rise at Dunlora Road and Bellona on private property, and faces the historic St. John’s AME Church, a mini-Steamboat Gothic Revival board-and-batten confection, that was built in 1886 by African-American congregants from Bare Hills.
Recently, the tree underwent a serious pruning, which removed dead wood.
“But the tree is in serious decline,” Coale said the other day from his Ruxton home. “There are a lot of factors, but it has fought bravely and nobly over many years.”
He points to a variety of factors, its vital root support system that has been cut in several places over the years and simply the “wear and tear of being in an urban area and not always being able to restore itself.”
There have been battles with Phytopthora, a fungus that attacks its delicate root fibers.
Other detrimental impediments, including storms, pollution, drought and road and utility construction near its roots reservoir, have been a challenge.
It also has an enormous thirst, which requires a weekly cocktail of 4,000 gallons of water, fungicide treatments and fertilization.
The tree was a seedling in 1646, meaning it was poking its head through the soil before there even was a Ruxton, coming into being just 12 years after Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, landed at St. Clements Island, near what is to today’s St. Mary’s County in 1634, to found Maryland.
To put its longevity into perspective, the great oak was there in 1694 when Maryland’s government abandoned St. Mary’s City for Annapolis.
It has, and continues to be, an eyewitness to history.
Native Americans would have been familiar with the tree that also marks the east-west dividing line between two 1694 land grants, Young Man’s Adventure and Samuel Hope, according to Coale.
During the American Revolution, local settlers and farmers served with the Continental Army while also providing provisions, which rattled by the tree in wagons.
By the late 1700s, the Bellona Gunpowder Mills rose on the western shore of Lake Roland, which gave Bellona Avenue its name, which is a derivation of Bellum, the Latin word for war.
When it wasn’t experiencing devastating, earthshaking explosions that could be felt as far away as Washington, for instance, the works provided more than 200 barrels of powder used in the defense of Baltimore at Fort McHenry in 1814.
With the coming of the Baltimore & Susquehanna Railroad in 1832, the tree bore witness as the railroad built its line northward to York, Pennsylvania, which in 1858 became the Northern Central Railway.
In November of 1863, as President Abraham Lincoln traveled to Pennsylvania to give the Gettysburg Address, if he had glanced up from his notes for a moment as his train passed through Ruxton, he would have seen the tree standing there boldly trackside.
And just two years later, as his funeral train was conveying him back to Springfield, Illinois, the tree would have noted this sad passing.
Today, it’s the right-of-way for the light rail line from Glen Burnie to Hunt Valley.
It was there in 1901 when the special train conveying the newly sworn in President Theodore Roosevelt swept by on its way to Washington from Buffalo following the assassination of President William McKinley.
It was also there when the first airplane soared overhead and the first motorcar backfired and bucked its way in a cloud of dust down Bellona Avenue.
Despite numerous obstacles — both natural and manmade — the tree has endured.
“It still remains locally a symbol of longevity, beauty and strength,” Coale said.
“The Ruxton Oak still hangs on showing its resilience, dignity and desire to be a part of our community for a while longer,” Coale wrote of the tree in 2023.
“The Ruxton Oak deserves our respect and recognition. It is a living link to our beginnings and should be seen as a symbol of immense local pride.
“It’s not an inanimate object but rather one that seems to have a mysterious spiritual quality when in its presence. An inspiration for us all.”
Coale has a sapling from the Ruxton Oak growing in the yard of his home —- so its legacy will happily continue.
It is difficult to ascertain from the photograph, but it appears that the Ruxton Liberty Tree has some sort of ivy growing up the trunk. If this is the case, it is shocking to see as ivy is detrimental to trees.
Nice job, Fred. May the Ruxton Liberty Tree live on in good health.