Bacon, in his History of Natick, 1856, remarks:  “The oak standing a few rods to the east of the South Meeting-house bears every evidence of an age greater than that of the town, and was probably a witness of Eliot’s first visit to the ‘place of hills.’” It would be quite possible to subscribe to this conclusion, while dissenting entirely from the premises.  It will be noticed that Bacon relies upon the appearance of the tree as a proof of its age.  His own measurement, fourteen and a half feet circumference at two feet from the ground, is not necessarily indicative of more than a century’s growth.

The writer upon Natick, in Drake’s Historic Middlesex, avoids expressing an opinion.  “Tradition links these trees with the Indian Missionary.”  For very long flights of time, tradition—­as far as the age of trees is concerned—­cannot at all be relied upon; within the narrow limits involved in the present case, it may be received with caution.

The Red Oak which stood nearly in front of the old Newell Tavern, was the original Eliot Oak.  Mr. Austin Bacon, who is familiar with the early history and legends of Natick, states that “Mr. Samuel Perry, a man who could look back to 1749, often said that Mr. Peabody, the successor to Eliot, used to hitch his horse by that tree every Sabbath, because Eliot used to hitch his there.”

This oak was originally very tall; the top was probably broken off in the tremendous September gale of 1815; as it was reported to be in a mutilated condition in 1820.  Time, however, partially concealed the disaster by means of a vigorous growth of the remaining branches.  In 1830, it measured seventeen feet in circumference two feet from the ground.  It had now become a tree of note, and would probably have monopolized the honors to the exclusion of the present Eliot Oak, had it not met with an untimely end.  The keeper of the tavern in front of which it stood had the tree cut down in May, 1842.  This act occasioned great indignation, and gave rise to a lawsuit at Framingham, “which was settled by the offenders against public opinion paying the costs and planting trees in the public green.”  A cartload of the wood was carried to the trial, and much of it was taken home by the spectators to make into canes and other relics,

  “The King is dead, long live the King!”

Upon the demise of the old monarch, the title naturally passed to the White Oak, its neighbor, another of the race of Titans, standing conveniently near, of whose early history very little is positively known beyond the fact that it is an old tree; and with the title passed the traditions and reverence that gather about crowned heads.

Mrs. Stowe has given it a new claim to notice, for beneath it, according to Drake’s Historic Middlesex, “Sam Lawson, the good-natured, lazy story-teller, in Oldtown Folks, put his blacksmith’s shop.  It was removed when the church was built.”

The present Eliot Oak stands east of the Unitarian meeting-house, which church is on or near the spot where Eliot’s first church stood.  It measured, January, 1884, seventeen feet in circumference at the ground; fourteen feet two inches at four feet above.  It is a fine old tree, and it is not improbable—­though it is unproven—­that it dates back to the first settlement of Natick.