The Naming of Trees

by Peter P. Ward

One the first of May, 1892, the students of Brentwood’s only school - a one-room octagonal affair constructed after the architectural suggestions of the phrenologist Orson Squire Fowler - gathered on the lawn to celebrate Arbor Day. For an audience of parent, teacher, and passerby, the students read compositions, recited poems, sang songs, and, at last, quietly awaited the arrival of a certain guest of honor. Joining them were two great American authors: William Cullen Bryant and James Fenimore Cooper, standing proud and straight at attention. They waited in the spring air until, at last, the awaited guest made his entrance. It was really him: Abraham Lincoln. For a moment, the crowd simply enjoyed the presence their guest. Then, all at once, the final part of the ceremonies began. As was the custom of those early Arbor Days, they lifted Mr. Lincoln up, and, to the accompaniment of pleased applause, lowered him into the ground. There, Mr. Lincoln standing beside Mr. Bryant and Mr. Cooper, the three maples would stand as a living reminder of Arbor Days past for years to come. 

Young Quentin Roosevelt plants a tree (Library of Congress)

Two days, a hundred years, and a state of mind stand between Arbor Day (today celebrated on the last Friday in April; started in 1872) and Earth Day (started in 1970; celebrated on April 22nd). Arbor Day was a product of the naturalist movement of the 19th century, exemplified by the reading of Emerson’s “Nature" and people like John Burroughs, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Theodore Roosevelt. The main activity of Arbor Day was, and is, the planting of trees. Arbor Day was inspired by a positive, appreciative stream of thought behind the national park movement and the building of the first arboretums, by that name, in the United States. Although Earth Day was started by people who might also be called naturalists and natural historians, the mindset was different; a response by industrial disasters, pollution, and the archetypical warning of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring - the advent of the environmentalist. The worldview of Arbor Day sees the act of protecting, expanding, and appreciative natural areas as a progressive, future-oriented act; with Earth Day, it is a defensive effort to return to a more idyllic state. The two days are complimentary and have similarities as well. It seems oddly prescient that, one of the first justifications of Arbor Day was an argument for benefit of trees to the environment.  

In Roger Wunderlich’s study, “Low Living and High Thinking at Modern Times” he draws many of his facts from today obscure and otherwise unknown historical materials, one of them the so-called “Minute Book of District 12.” This was a notebook of “minutes” or records, of the meetings of the board of trustees of the first school district of Brentwood, the 12th school district to be established on Long Island, it follows from the start of the school district in 1852, until the early 20th century. An especially interesting page is near the end of the book: it is a drawing of the map of the school property, along with the names of several familiar maple trees and the spots where the trees had planted along with a note: “The Friday following the first May in each year shall hereafter be known throughout this state as Arbor Day.”