Victorian Urban Legends: Bodies in Trees October 4, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Kay Massingill has recently offered to readers of Forteana Exchange a series of body in tree stories. The earliest seems to be this one from 1873 and they carry on into the 1920s. The tale typically has it that someone, perhaps escaping from danger, climbs into a tree, then cannot get out. That brings us to a sad Ohio story.
In a hurricane passing over the Ohio River and down the Miami Valley on the night of the 4th of July [1873] a splendid grove of oaks on the ‘Old Anderson Farm’ of a Mr. Rogers, in the latter locality, was almost wholly prostrated, and here is an amazing story derived there from and gravely communicated to the Miami county Democrat by one J.F. Clarke. Upon the morning subsequent to the storm (Saturday) Mr. Rogers, in company with a hired man, proceeded to inquire into the extent of the damages inflicted upon his premises, and the first objective point was the ruined grove. The centre tree of the plat was a noble oak, the king over his fellows, and a tree which had stood the ravages of time seemingly unscathed for several centuries. This tree has been snapped and felled by the storm. Upon examining the fallen giant for the purpose of ascertaining its worth as rail timber, Mr Rogers made a startling discovery. This was nothing less than the fact that the tree in falling had disgourged a skeleton. The bones were disconnected – yellow as gold with age and scattered promiscuously over several square feet of pasturage. The skull was almost intact. All the teeth save two molars were still in their places, and there was a scar on the left parietal bone which seemed the memento of a cavalry charge. The humerus of the right arm was shattered, and save the three defects just mentioned the skeleton, when put together, was without blemish. The tree in falling, I should have mentioned, was rent asunder – a task not difficult of accomplishment when I refer to the fact that an examination showed that at some remote date the very heart of the oak had been cleft by lightning. From a spot twenty feet from the ground upwards to the first great fork – a distance of ten feet – a hollow extended, and from this cavity the skeleton had been hurled.
So someone climbed into the lightning shafted tree and died there. Of course, we’ll never know who…
If we but knew who he was, thought my informant, Mr. Rogers – and strange to say, a few minutes later the twain discovered that the tree had also disgorged a thrilling history. An old fashioned leather pocket or memorandum book lay, in a remarkable state of preservation, which no doubt had been dropped into the rent made by the lightning, and thus been preserved while its master decayed. A few brass buttons of old and unique pattern were found near the memorandum book, but it is with the latter that we have to deal. This old leather purse, entirely moneyless, contained sundry papers, covered with rude pencilings, quite difficult to trace, as they were written on the backs of army passes and military consignments, which dated back as far as 1776. Mr Rogers conveyed the bones to his house and set about to read the memorandum of the captive of the tree. But owing to his failing eyesight he could decipher but little, and that little a conglomerate mass of disconnections. But still he read enough to learn that the eyes that once flashed in the now orbless sockets had looked upon Washington in the heat of battle, and amid the snows of Valley; and the skeleton arm when covered with flesh and muscle had struck many stalwart blows for country. The man’s name, as gathered from the papers, was Roger Vandenburg, a native of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and a captain in the revolutionary army. He was an aid to Washington in the retreat across the Jerseys and served a time in Arnold’s headquarters at West Point. In 1791, he marched with St Clair against the Northwestern Indians, and in that famous outbreak of that general on the Wabash – on November 2d of the year just written – he was wounded and captured. But while being conveyed to the Indian town at Upper Piqua – a historical place well known to your readers – he effected his escape, but found himself hard pressed by his savage foes. He saw the hollow in the oak, and despite the mangled arm, with the aid of a beech that grew beside the giant oak then, he gained the heaven [haven] and dropped therein.
It was a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire, though…
Then came a fearful discovery. He had miscalculated the depth of the hollow and there was no mistake. O, the story told by the diary of the oak’s despairing prisoner! How rather than surrender to the torture of the fire he chose slow death by starvation; how he wrote his diary in the uncertain light and amid the snows! Here is one of the entries in the diary. ‘November 10th: Five days without food. When I sleep, I dream of luscious fruits and flowing streams. I freeze while I starve. God pity me.’ Some of the words were almost illegible, as the trembling hand oftimes re-used [?] to indite plainly. The entries covered a period of eleven days, and in disjointed sentences told the story of St. Clair’s defeat. Mr Rogers has written to Lancaster to ascertain if any of the descendants of the ill-fated captain are alive; if so, they shall have his body. Jackson Citizen (Jackson, Michigan), 12 Aug 1873.
And it is true? Of course not! If so this would have been one of the discoveries of the nineteenth century. This phantom body immediately vanishes from the historical record. But what invention and some great lines: ‘the eyes that once flashed in the now orbless sockets had looked upon Washington in the heat of battle, and amid the snows of Valley’. Why did the body in the tree become such a popular nineteenth century urban legend: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
17 Oct 2015: Typhon writes in ‘I am enjoying your series on skeletons in trees. Concerning the skeletons in trees idea…maybe there is a connection to the germanic rite of worshipping and sacrificing under/near oaks, yews, etc.?’
I wonder…
29 May 2017: Filip G. on his webpage has found a couple of instances. One screen capture here…
