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Notes (historical):
From comparing the photograph with descriptions, this might be the King Philip Oak in Taunton, Massachusetts, which was a large oak with almost identical dimensions on 98 Somerset Avenue, the corner of White St. and Somerset Ave. King Philip supposdly met with his council here during the bloody King Philip War of 1675-1676, a conflict between the Indians and English settlers in New England. English expansion of settlements in Massachusetts and in neighboring colonies increased after this war. In 1926, 2 years after Wilson took this photo, the Lydia Cobb Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution put a plaque on the tree that reads "THIS MARKS THE PHILIP OAK, A SENTINEL OF NEARLY FOUR CENTURIES." The tree slowly rotted, and became a hazard. In 1973, a large branch fell on a parked car nearby, and 10 years later the tree was taken down. The King Philip tree's legacy lived on, however. In 1950, a citizen of Taunton planted an acorn from the King Philip tree nearby, so there is a so-called "son of King Philip." (Eric B. Schultz and Michael J. Douglas, King Philip's War" [Countryman Press, 1999], unpaginated; Charles Edgar Randall and Henry Clepper, Famous Historic Trees [Washington, DC: American Forestry Association, 1977], 32)
IIIF Manifest