It is with a heavy heart that we announce the end of one of our last two centenarian pecan trees. We have lost two out of three this year. This was the tree we got married under only one and a half years ago. You can see the bracket fungus all up and down the side in this photo. It attacks the heart wood and once you see it in this stage, it is pretty much too late to save the tree. This one was such a giant, that we made the decision to take it down before it fell. Rest in pieces you ol’ beauty.

We counted the rings and it looks like the tree’s first year was 1874.

Here are a few interesting things that happened the year the tree was born:

Jan 1 New York City annexes the Bronx
Jan 17 Armed Democrats seize Texas government ending Radical Reconstruction
Jan 31 Jesse James gang robs a train at Gads Hill, Missouri
Mar 2 National Association of Professional Baseball Players officially adopts the batter’s box; decide any player betting on his own team will be expelled; any player betting on any other team to forfeit his pay
Mar 10 Purdue University (Indiana) admits its 1st student
Apr 15 NY legislature passes compulsory education law
Apr 15 First ‘Impressionist’ exhibition opens in Paris, features Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot
May 9 The first horse-drawn bus makes its début in the city of Mumbai, plying two routes
May 14 1st admission charge at a football game, Harvard beats Uni of McGill (Montreal) 3-0
Jun 22 Game of lawn tennis introduced
Jul 1 1st US zoo opens (Philadelphia)
Aug 26 16 blacks lynched in Tennessee
Nov 24 American inventor Joseph Glidden patents barbed wire
Dec 8 Jesse James gang takes train at Muncie Kansas
Dec 12 Hawaii King David Kalakaua is 1st king to visit the US as guest of Ulysses S. Grant at 1st US state dinner at the White House
Dec 15 1st reigning king to visit US is the King of Hawaii, received by President Grant
Dec 24 Pope Pius IX proclaims a jubilee for 1875