The Loss of a Great Old Tree

The recent articles about the Teaneck Cedar Lane Red Oak brought to mind the demise of another ancient native tree in the area. At Historic New Bridge Landing, a Black Walnut Tree estimated to be 250 years old by an arborist, had to come down in the fall of 2010. The leafy tree looked healthy but was partly hollow having been struck by lighting many years ago (1938). When a large limb came down we knew it was time to evaluate the tree.

Why does the loss of a tree provoke so much interest?
A black walnut tree is often found near the early houses of the Jersey Dutch, sometimes they were planted in pairs. Black walnut cake is a traditional marriage cake; a recipe survives in my husband's family from the upper Delaware Valley region of New Jersey. The cake must be for a really special occasion as the black walnut meat is very difficult to extract from the shell. Grandma Wright would use a corn sheller and rubber gloves to get to the distinctively flavored nut.

Jan and Anneke (Ackerman) Zabriskie built the Zabriskie-Steuben House in 1752 at New Bridge and so prospered as merchants and millers that they enlarged the house to accommodate their son, Jan, Jr., who married Jane Goelet in 1764. A grandson, Jan, was born in 1767.
Perhaps the black walnut tree was planted as a long-lived memento of this happy occasion for the family. Twelve years later the American Revolution would turn their lives upside down.
A tree can be a living measure of time connecting us back to other generations and other chapters of our own lives. 

Scores of wedding photos have been taken under the New Bridge tree. There are many happy memories of afternoons spent under the shade of the enormous tree.

The New Bridge tree lives on, there are several saplings growing on the grounds at Historic New Bridge Landing.

In memory of her sister Kathryn Balle, Teaneck resident Joan Oddie made a generous donation to the Bergen County Historical Society for the purpose of making a memento from the tree. Her husband, Teaneck Representative on the HNBL Park Commission John Oddie, made arrangements for Studio L of Teaneck to construct a large table from the dark wood. We were delighted to install the memorial table in the Steuben House the last week in May.

Joan has fond memories of visiting the house with her sister as a schoolgirl.

Historic New Bridge Landing.
Experience history in one of the storied places where it was made!   
www.bergencountyhistory.org