386 years old tree

It may be hard to believe but one of America’s earliest settlers is still alive today and bearing fruit after 386 years. Among the first wave of immigrants to the New World was an English Puritan named John Endicott who planted the sapling in Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts. For Arbor Day in 1890, poet Lucy Larcom composed about the old tree so long rooted in American history:

Such a wonder you may see;
For the patriarchal tree
Blossoms still, — the living thought
Of good Governor Endicott.
Fruit again this year to bear;
Honor to that brave old pear!