Will Higgins

will.higgins@indystar.com

CORYDON — If there's one thing Indiana's bicentennial proves, it's that the Constitution Elm is not the icon it used to be.

It was once a very big deal. "An object of reverence for loyal Hoosiers," IndyStar called it in 1909.

The tree was special twice-over: Biologically it was practically a freak of nature, the diameter of its crown measuring an astounding 130 feet (Indiana's current elm king, according to DNR records, is 116 feet limb-tip-to-limb-tip). But what made it an object of full-on Hoosier awe, according to murky but long-accepted accounts, was that under that leafy canopy Indiana's 43 founding fathers took shade to escape the summer heat and there did the hard, sometimes contentious work of drafting the 1816 constitution, the document that 200 years ago made Indiana a state.

Poems were written about the Constitution Elm. One began: "I am the elm of Corydon/the Hoosier elm am I." Families had portraits taken under its leafy splendor. Newspapers wrote about it.

The tree was 150 years old when Indiana joined the Union, and so it wasn't shocking that by the early 20th century its health had begun to flag. When it did, newspapers carried stories about the desperate efforts to save the tree, which is sometimes called the Hoosier Elm. Early in the 20th century, it was "attacked," reported IndyStar, by "an imported European insect," an elm leaf beetle. But later, a forestry expert pronounced that it was in "an excellent state of preservation" and could live another 100 years.

For Indiana's 1916 centennial, the elm was represented prominently on the official commemorative medallion. There came another poem. It began: "All hail to thee, most stately Elm/Majestic, lofty and sublime/May they grandeur ne'er be defaced/By the ravages of time."

The tree was dead nine years later. Dutch elm disease.

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Yet its veneration continued. The Hoosier-born entertainment superstar Hoagy Carmichael made a giant (5 feet by 7 feet) and sad painting of the Constitution Elm's dead, leafless but still standing hulk. Its magnificent branches were cut away from the trunk for safety reasons. Corydon's Daughters of the American Revolution club, the "Hoosier Elm" chapter, oversaw the carving up and the subsequent removal of the sacred wood — 30 wagonloads of it — to the safety and security of selected local barns and houses. Later that wood would be made into gavels and letter openers and so on, and parceled out to dignitaries and museums, like bits of the true cross. Sometimes chunks were given away, and even these raw pieces were displayed in places of honor such as county courthouses.

About 15 feet of the trunk was left standing, and an elaborate, shrinelike stone structure, open on the sides but covered with a roof, was erected around the trunk.

Flash-forward a century to Indiana's bicentennial being celebrated this year throughout the state's 92 counties. The Constitution Elm languishes in obscurity.

It's not to be found on the bicentennial medallion. Tripadvisor, in its list of 19 "Things to Do in Corydon," makes no mention of the elm. In June, when Gov. Mike Pence visited Corydon to retrieve the constitution, which had been on display here, dignitaries and period re-enactors gathered for speeches and ceremony at the Old State Capitol building. The Constitution Elm stood alone a few blocks away.

The Indiana State Museum is marking the bicentennial with an exhibit called "200 Objects," a display of key Hoosier items such as a tunic worn by Gary native Michael Jackson during his "Dangerous" world tour, a pair of Converse Chuck Taylor sneakers once owned by the actual Chuck Taylor (born in Azalia, 1901) and a motorized pogo stick invented by a Madison County man.

But no piece of the Constitution Elm, even though the museum has several good-sized hunks of it.

"A slice of a tree, like a brick from a house, it’s a curiosity, sort of like a two-headed calf," said Dale Ogden, the museum's chief curator of history and culture. "But what it really says is comparatively limited. That tree just happened to be there. It's the kind of thing museums collected 100 years ago."

"The pressure I see on museums," said George Geib, a retired Butler University history professor who has researched Indiana's 1916 centennial celebration, "is a need for inclusiveness, to have something representative of each group of people who might visit the museum, as opposed to 'What's the most important object?' And also, the fact is that an awful lot of stuff that resonated in 1916 doesn't resonate anymore."

But in Corydon (population 3,000) the Constitution Elm still resonates. Bits of it pepper the town's many historic sites — a small crotch piece in the Gov. Hendricks carriage house; slabs the size of Galapagos tortoises in the William Henry Harrison log cabin and the Griffin Center for Local History and Genealogy; and in the Old State Capitol the prize — a crotch piece large enough that a nuclear family could use it as a bench.

Before the Earth was paved, large trees sometimes functioned as meet-up places. Naturally, historic events sometimes occurred under them. In Cambridge, Mass., the Washington Elm is where George Washington was said to have taken command of the Continental Army. In Hampton, Va., slaves gathered under the Emancipation Oak to hear the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation. South Bend’s Council Oak is where the French explorer LaSalle made peace with Native Americans.

Historic buildings are easily (if expensively) preserved — Independence Hall's tower recently got a $5 million rehabbing, for example, and the thing looks great. But no amount of money can make a tree live forever.

And if a tree was old enough to have been big enough to have been a gathering place in days of yore, by now it's either nearly dead or dead. The Washington Elm keeled over in 1923 and like the Constitution Elm was parceled out as souvenirs. The Council Oak, despite efforts to keep it upright with cables and cement, blew down in 1991. The Emancipation Oak is alive, but its days are numbered, its branches held up by a system of wires.

Corydon, the Harrison County seat, is a history-minded town for several reasons. For one, a lot of important events happened here: Besides hosting the constitutional convention that led to statehood, Corydon served as the first state capital; William Henry Harrison, the 9th U.S. president, frequented Corydon and owned property here; Indiana's only Civil War battle was fought here; Indiana's first school for African-Americans was here.

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And this: In the 1960s, construction of I-64 reached Harrison County. The interstate diverted traffic away from Corydon and put the town's merchants in a bad way. The response: "We bumped up the history a bit," said Doug Stiner, who grew up in Corydon and now gives tours of its historic sites. There are a whopping 39 sites in all. Historic markers also abound, some erected in the 1960s not by any historical society but by the local convention and visitors bureau and by the local chamber of commerce.

Around that time, people began noticing that the trunk of the Constitution Elm was showing wear and tear despite the sandstone enclosure. The trunk was coated with creosote, a toxic, tarlike substance that turned the trunk black but may have helped preserve it.

But by 2012 the trunk was looking ratty again, showing signs of insect infestation and dry rot. The bark was long gone, and there were a number of holes in the tree the size of quarters. Several residents went on Facebook and started a "Save the Constitution Elm" page. People had different opinions on how best to save it. "I thought there might be a way to put sterile air around it," said Sheryl Scharf, one of the Facebook page founders. "I thought it needed some fiberglass on it," said Susan McGuffey, who lives near the elm and sometimes comes out to greet visitors.

The state of Indiana investigated and agreed to spend $19,000 to shore up the elm and its sandstone structure. The creosote was removed from the trunk and new, improved preservatives applied. "Technology keeps changing," said Bruce Beesley, who's in charge of Indiana's state-owned historic sites. "Our ability to maintain (the elm) will continue to improve. I expect (the elm) to be there for the tricentennial." (Later Beesley agreed he was "an optimistic guy.")

Norma Windell Lincoln was oddly calm about the elm's long-term prognosis, considering she's a lifelong Corydon resident and direct descendant of Dennis Pennington, one of the 1816 delegates (she said her husband is a distant descendant of Abraham Lincoln). Windell Lincoln is 67 and recently recovered from a serious illness. "Things come, and things go," she said the other day, standing near the elm and wearing a T-shirt that said Pennington Descendant.

"I'm maybe not as attached to things as I used to be.

"I feel like I sort of understand the cycle of life."

Contact IndyStar reporter Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043. Follow him on Twitter @WillRHiggins.



