Rhonda Williams clasped her hands and with a mix of angst and hope she watched as experts tended to one of the oldest living things on Fort Monroe — the Algernourne Oak.
The experts nimbly scaled the massive ancient oak on a gusty Monday morning to determine the best ways to preserve and protect the near 500-year-old tree.
“There’s historic value to it. It needs to be cared for,” said Williams, who managers commercial properties at Fort Monroe. “It has been here before the Native Americans walked under it and no one cut it down in all these years is remarkable. There is a lot of spirit under this tree, what it has seen in this nation. There is something powerful it we can have a small part in maintaining it for another 500 years. It’s very humbling.”
The Fort Monroe Authority received a $6,850 grant in September from the Virginia Department of Forestry to assist with its preservation program. A first round of work will upgrade lightning protection and branch supports, add soil nutrients, clear dead or diseased branches from its canopy and lay down mulch.
“The goal here is to give this tree the respect that it deserves. We want to make the site demonstrate that we respect this tree,” Glenn Oder, Fort Monroe’s executive director said. “There’s so much character in a live oak, the way its branches are contorted, the way it carries so much weight. There’s a lot of imagery. I think, in live oak trees that bears a lot of symbolism to the stories of our country and the stories of Fort Monroe.”
Fort Monroe became a historic national landmark in 1960 and the Algernourne Oak is one of the reasons. The oak also is one of the reasons why the fort was designated is 2011 a national monument within the National Park Service, Oder said.
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Silent witness
Five centuries have passed since a sapling emerged from a single acorn.
When Native Americans claimed the lands near the mouth of the James River, the live oak was likely in the early days of its life cycle.
The Algonquian-speaking tribe of the Eastern Woodland Indians may have been in the region, Hampton History Museum educator Kris Peters said in an email.
Later, the nearest Virginia Indian town of Kecoughtan was forced into the Powhatan Confederation in 1597 — the regional Virginia Indian governing establishment, museum curator Allen Hoilman added.
The English arrived in 1607 and established Ft. Algernourne in 1609, and forcibly removed the Kecoughtan, seizing their town and adjacent lands in 1610.
“That tree would have seen all that, plus that which came afterward,” Hoilman said in an email.
In 1619, when the first recorded entry of Africans landed at Old Port Comfort, near Fort Algernourne, the expansive oak kept watch.
Two centuries later, enslaved descendants of those first Africans forged a granite fortress, named for the fifth U.S. president — James Monroe.
The oak continued to evolve amid a meadow within the Fortress Monroe, a Union Army stronghold where three slaves — Shepard Mallory, Frank Baker and James Townsend — hopped into a skiff and rowed across the river to the fort seeking asylum. Accepted by Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, they became “contraband of war.” The fortress and the ground where the tree grew would sanctuary for thousands of slaves who sought refuge asylum within the fortress’ gates.
The oak thrived more — surviving the Civil War, hurricanes, lightning and a sidewalk laid over its roots by the Army.
“That sidewalk needs to come out. That’s going to be a little bit of an engineering challenge because we want to remove the sidewalk without taking heavy equipment in there,” Oder said.
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A tree grows in Fort Monroe
According to its last measurement in 2017 done by park ranger Aaron Firth and a team from Virginia Tech, with a circumference of 288 inches and height of 58 feet, the tree is in good shape, says Dan Lonergan, a certified arborist with Bartlett.
Its limbs are solid but covered with lime and moss. Its verdant leaves are a deep in color, but its branches could use a little support.
“It’s a live oak — common name — super resilient, a slow growing species. There’s a thousand ways the tree can die — storms, pest disease outbreak,” Lonergan said. “This tree has lived through all these things and continues to be healthy today. It’s in a really nice growing environment.”
Quercus virginiana, or southern live oaks, are named for where they grow, but are also found in Florida and Georgia, and west to Texas and Oklahoma, according to The National Wildlife Federation website.
They are evergreens and tend to
do well in salty soils and shade. But it can get cold in coastal Virginia.
“This is about the edge of how far north live oak trees grow. The idea that one has survived for 500 years, tells you that there’s this micro climate here in the Hampton Roads region, and especially on this coastal island in the Chesapeake Bay,” Oder said, adding maybe the warm waters surrounding Fort Monroe have helped.
To protect against lightning, the Bartlett team is improving a system, with a terminal end that runs down a copper cable. It is a ground rod that reaches down into the groundwater, whereas if lightning were the hit it would track down that copper system into the ground, Lonergan said.
A future vision for the great Algernourne Oak is to make it a part of the fort’s walking tour, Williams said.
“We’ll have a tree well around it and eventually would like to have seating where people can sit underneath, read books and contemplate,” she said.
Lisa Vernon Sparks, 757-432-4832, lvernonsparks@dailypress.com
