The Richard T. Bowers Historic Tree Grove at MOSI offers a unique timeline of America's history as it was viewed by silent witnesses, trees. Our 18 trees in the grove are all seedlings of trees that witnessed amazing historic events or were associated with famous historical people. Imagine the sycamore that grew from seeds that went to the moon, a pine that watched a battle of the American Civil War, or the sweet gum that saw the flight of the first airplane. What wonders those trees witnessed and those same trees still live long after the events of history have passed. We can still lay our hands on their bark, sit beneath their boughs and take a few minutes out to learn and converse about great deeds and fantastic people which shaped our world.
Ft. Matanzas Red Cedar
245 French Huguenots were stranded in an inlet just south of the new village of St Augustine and were massacred among the dunes by Spanish forces led by Menendez in 1565. The inlet was named Matanzas which is the Spanish term for “slaughter”. This incident initiated Spanish control of Florida for some 235 years. Long the site of wooden watchtowers, Ft. Matanzas began construction in 1740 to guard access to this unprotected inlet that could allow pirates or foreign forces to reach the now well established city of St Augustine.
- Ft Matanzas is host to many red cedar trees of over 150 years of age and also boasts a red cedar tree that is over 260 years old.
Mt. Vernon, the home of our first President George Washington, was an 8000 acre plantation divided into five farms. Each farm was a complete unit, with its own overseers, work force of slaves, livestock, equipment, and buildings.
The farm where Washington and his family lived was called the "Mansion House Farm." This is the part of the plantation that visitors see today. Washington developed the property’s 500 acres to create a fitting setting for a country gentleman. He designed the grounds to include a deep border of woods, rolling meadows, serpentine walkways, a pleasure garden, a kitchen garden, and groves of trees. As nearly as possible, Mount Vernon was a self-contained community. Nothing was purchased that could be produced on site.
- One tree that Washington loved was the American holly (Ilex opaca). Several holly trees that he planted in 1776 and 1785 remain in the Serpentine on both the south and the north sides.
- The Clara Barton Redbud can be found at her home in Glen Echo, Maryland
Andersonville was the site of the later infamous prison camp known as Fort Sumter. A rectangular stockade made of rough hewn pine logs was constructed and estimated to be able to contain some 10,000 Union prisoners of war. Housing up to 33,000 Union prisoners Andersonville provided no shelter, a single stream of contaminated water, and few supplies of food and medicine. 13,000 Union prisoners died due to malnutrition, disease, and exposure before the prison closed at the end of the war, April 1865. Andersonville became synonymous with the atrocities which both North and South soldiers experienced as prisoners of war.
- The Andersonville Southern Magnolias were planted as grave markers for Union prisoners of war. Clara Barton identified bodies at Andersonville Prison after the Civil War, and it is thought that she was responsible for planting these trees.
Olustee Longleaf PineThe Battle of Olustee, also known as the Battle of Ocean Pond, was one of the few battles of the American Civil War fought in Florida. On February 20, 1864 Union forces on an expedition into Florida to secure Union enclaves, sever Confederate supply routes, and recruit black soldiers met with a force of 5000 Confederate troops. The battle was a rout for Union forces. A regrettable episode in the aftermath of the battle was the apparent mistreatment of Union black soldiers by the Confederates. Contemporary sources, many from the Confederate side, indicate that a number of black soldiers were killed on the battlefield by roaming bands of southern troops following the close of the fighting.
- The site of the Battle of Olustee is home to many stands of Longleaf Pine trees.
Dr John Gorrie was a pioneer in refrigeration, the artificial manufacture of ice, and air conditioning. Gorrie’s theory of highly compressing air, water cooling the air within metal pipes, and returning the air to its natural uncompressed state to create air cold enough to freeze water is the basis upon which modern refrigeration is based.
- The Dr John Gorrie Red Cedar stands outside the John Gorrie Museum in Apalachicola, Florida.
Chickasaw Plum
One of the trees chosen for the Richard T. Bowers Historic Tree Grove at MOSI is not the descendant of one particularly significant tree, but rather a descendant of an important species. A small hedge of Chickasaw Plum (Prunus angustifolia) borders one end of the grove and each spring these small trees put on a show of fragrant white blooms.
Chickasaw plum was among the first fruits domesticated for human use in North America. It was observed in groves deemed ‘ancient’ by the American born naturalist William Bartram who lived from 1739 to 1823. Bartram traveled the North American Southeast as part of a survey party in the late 1770’s. He noted the species of plants and animals he observed, land features that he encountered and also described the clothing and customs of the indigenous peoples he met.
In the trek between the now deserted Quaker settlement of Wrightsborough and the once lost Great Buffalo Lick Bartram’s party came across long deserted settlements of the indigenous Native Americans. Although most traces of the villages were gone orchards of planted trees remained. Among the species Bartram found were Shellbark Hickory, Honeylocust, Persimmon, Eastern Black Hickory, Red Mulberry, Beauty Berry and Chickasaw Plum. Bartram noted that these stands of fruit bearing trees were still in use by the local Creek peoples who collected and used the fruit in their day to day lives.
Each summer the Chickasaw Plum’s thorny branches give forth small golden plums that ripen to a lovely bright red hue. The tiny fruits are tart and sweet at the same time with a small pit in the center.
Chickasaw plum was among the first fruits domesticated for human use in North America. It was observed in groves deemed ‘ancient’ by the American born naturalist William Bartram who lived from 1739 to 1823. Bartram traveled the North American Southeast as part of a survey party in the late 1770’s. He noted the species of plants and animals he observed, land features that he encountered and also described the clothing and customs of the indigenous peoples he met.
In the trek between the now deserted Quaker settlement of Wrightsborough and the once lost Great Buffalo Lick Bartram’s party came across long deserted settlements of the indigenous Native Americans. Although most traces of the villages were gone orchards of planted trees remained. Among the species Bartram found were Shellbark Hickory, Honeylocust, Persimmon, Eastern Black Hickory, Red Mulberry, Beauty Berry and Chickasaw Plum. Bartram noted that these stands of fruit bearing trees were still in use by the local Creek peoples who collected and used the fruit in their day to day lives.
Each summer the Chickasaw Plum’s thorny branches give forth small golden plums that ripen to a lovely bright red hue. The tiny fruits are tart and sweet at the same time with a small pit in the center.
- The George Washington Carver Persimmon is a seedling from a tree originally grown by George Washington Carver.
- Juliette Gordon Low Southern Magnolia grows in Savannah, Georgia, in honor of the women who founded the Girl Scouts.
During the years 1900, 1901, and 1902, experimenting with kites, gliders, and a wind tunnel they built to test wing design, the two brothers developed the first effective airplane, and made the first flight of a powered, controlled, heavier-than-air airplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903.
In 1905, the Wright brothers built an airplane that could fly for more than half an hour at a time. In 1908 Orville made the world's first flight of over one hour at Fort Myer, Virginia, in a demonstration for the U.S. army, which subsequently made the Wright planes the world's first military airplanes. That same year Wilbur made over 100 flights near Le Mans, France; the longest one, on Dec. 31, a record flight: 2 hours, 19 minutes.
- This sweetgum is a seedling from a tree at the site of the Wright Brothers flight at Kitty Hawk.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was one of the pivotal leaders of the American civil rights movement. King was a Baptist minister, one of the few leadership roles available to black men at the time. He became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–1956) and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1957), serving as its first president. His efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. Here he raised public consciousness of the civil rights movement and established himself as one of the greatest orators in U.S. history. In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other non-violent means. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee.
- The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. gathered with 3,200 supporters at Brown Chapel, AME, shaded by the parent of this sycamore tree, and they peacefully marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge , toward Montgomery . Their ranks swelled to over 25,000 in the final stretch to the Capitol, four days later.
Pioneer of the assembly line, Henry Ford revolutionized the automotive industry in the United States by creating a production line that would cost effectively produce vehicles that could be sold at lower costs to the middle class. Ford motor Company released the Model T for $950 in 1908. In the Model T's nineteen years of production, its price dipped as low as $280. Ford doubled wages offered by other manufactures and reduced the average workday to 8 hours in length, instating a three-shift workday which could produce a completed vehicle chassis in just 93 minutes.
Ford's affordable Model T irrevocably altered American society. As more Americans owned cars, urbanization patterns changed. The United States saw the growth of suburbia, the creation of a national highway system, and a population entranced with the possibility of going anywhere anytime.
- At Henry Ford’s Dearborn estate, this sycamore stands in Jensen's Meadow.
Apollo 14 launched in the late afternoon of January 31, 1971 on what was to be our third trip to the lunar surface. Five days later Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell walked on the Moon while Stuart Roosa, a former U.S. Forest Service smoke jumper, orbited above in the command module. Packed in small containers in Roosa's personal kit were hundreds of tree seeds, part of a joint NASA/USFS project. Upon return to Earth, the seeds were germinated by the Forest Service. Known as the "Moon Trees", the resulting seedlings were planted throughout the United States (often as part of the nation's bicentennial in 1976) and the world. They stand as a tribute to astronaut Roosa and the Apollo program.
- Known as a Half-Moon tree, our Sycamore is a seedling from one of the original moon trees.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Roosevelt created the New Deal to provide relief for the unemployed, recovery of the economy, and reform of the economic and banking systems. Although recovery of the economy was incomplete until almost 1940, many programs initiated continue to have instrumental roles in the nation's commerce, such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). One of his most important legacies is the Social Security system.
- The Franklin D Roosevelt Live Oak stands in a 1,500 acre urban park in New Orleans built in 1891 and expanded under the President’s Works Progress Administration in the 1930’s.
Frank Lloyd Wright Ginko
Frank Lloyd Wright was a master builder, a rebel and a worshipper of nature. Wright introduced the word 'organic' into his philosophy of architecture as early as 1908. It was an extension of the teachings of his mentor Louis Sullivan whose slogan, "form follows function" became the mantra of modern architecture. Wright changed this phrase to "form and function are one," using nature as the best example of this integration.
- The Frank Lloyd Wright Gingko stood in front of his Forest Avenue home in Oak Park, Illinois , until it succumbed to a storm in 1992. Cuttings are taken from second-generation offspring of the original tree.
Blind since the age of six (from glaucoma), Ray Charles studied composition and learned many instruments at the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind. His parents had died by his early teens, and he worked as a musician in Florida for a while before using his savings to move to Seattle in 1947. He got his first Top Ten R&B hit with "Baby, Let Me Hold Your Hand" in 1951. Charles is best known as the father of soul music, and his career is regarded as a significant landmark in the world of modern music. Ray Charles died June 10, 2004.
- The Ray Charles Live Oak grows in St. Augustine, Florida , at the school where the renowned musician received his education.
Dr. Bowers was director of athletics at USF for 19 years, and a friend and fundraiser for the Gold Shield foundation that raises money for the families of fallen police officers. In his last years Dr. Bowers helped to raise money at MOSI for the whole museum but especially for the BioWorks Butterfly Garden and also the Historic Tree Grove. When he passed away in 2007, the Historic Tree Grove was renamed as the Richard T. Bowers Historic Tree Grove. Dr. Bowers was a fantastic gentleman who has been sorely missed at MOSI and in the Tampa community since his passing.
A picnic area surrounded has been created beneath this tree so that staff and guests can enjoy this wonderful tree and the memory of a wonderful gentleman.
