The Old Apple Tree, which no one can place

BEFORE 1761–1866 · SITE UNFIXED

A tree can be a landmark for a century and still be lost. At Kekionga, west of the St. Joseph River, stood an apple tree of extraordinary size — its trunk said to measure twelve feet around — beneath which, tradition holds, Tacumwah gave birth in 1761 to her son Pechewa, the future Chief Jean Baptiste de Richardville. The tree, presumably sprung from a seed dropped or planted by a French trader or priest, was old enough by 1848 to be drawn: a sketch dated June 19, 1848, captioned as the tree "noted for being over 100 years old and the reputed birth place of chief Richardville," survives, and Jesse Lynch Williams, the canal engineer, is quoted in the telling: "We need not question its identity." A heavy spring storm destroyed the tree in 1866; the main trunk lay where it fell for some time after.

What is known: the tradition, the 1848 sketch, and the tree's destruction. What is not known: where it stood. When the National Observer mentioned the famous apple tree in 1962, the Fort Wayne writer Wesley Bashore went looking for its site for the Journal Gazette, consulted the local historians of his day, and was offered a spot "about four houses down from Columbia on Edgewater." Bashore closed his story unconvinced, in the words the History Center's retelling preserves: there "simply was not enough evidence to locate precisely the positioning of the tree," and he was "more than willing to hand this flaming torch over to others hands." The History Center's own account, written by Tom Castaldi in 2015, ends the same way: "One day reliable evidence may surface." In the meantime the city has marked an approximate location — the 1994 Bicentennial's Heritage Trail carries a marker on Edgewater Avenue's park strip — and approximate is the honest word for it. The trail ends where Bashore left it: with a torch, unhanded.

Sources:

1. Tom Castaldi, "An Old Apple Tree of Fort Wayne Lore," History Center Notes & Queries ("Along the Heritage Trail," No. 125, June 2015) — the tradition, the 1848 sketch, the 1866 storm, Bashore's search and its conclusion, and the Edgewater marker's approximate standing.