A bit of folklore – stemming to the earliest days of the American Revolution – will be honored in The Villages when a Winged Elm tree is planted at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, March 10 at the Eisenhower Recreation Center.
The public is invited to the dedication ceremony sponsored by members of the Puc Puggy and John Bartram chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Villages’ chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution.
The event commemorates the Aug. 14, 1765 “gathering of colonists who had gathered under a large elm tree, in Boston’s Hanover Square, to protest the hated Stamp Act,” said Sallie Kautz, regent of the Puc Puggy Chapter. “Patriots hung an effigy of Andrew Oliver, the colonist chosen by King George III to impose the Stamp Act. It was the first public show of defiance against the Crown.”
“A month later, on Sept. 10, a sign, Tree of Liberty was nailed to the tree. Thereafter, nearly all the great political meetings of the Sons of Liberty were held at the Square,” Kautz said.
The Villages’ ceremony will feature a color guard in uniforms and chapter members wearing attire of the ‘period,’ as well as the distribution of American flags.
