CHARLOTTE DAILY OBSERVER 1913
TREE 976 YEARS OLD.
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Giant Cypress of Tuckahoa Swamp Made into Lumber.
(Special to The Observer)
KINSTON, Nov. 1.—After towering many feet above its neighbors in dismal
Tuckahoe Swamp near hero, for nearly 1,000 years it is estimated what is
believed to be the biggest tree in eastern Carolina of the species, a giant
cypress, has been removed through the enterprise of a local lumber
manufacturing concern A section of this patriarch of the section's primeval
forests was today placed on the lawn at the court house hero, with a copper
plate nailed upon it bearing the inscription: "This cypress stump stood for
976 years in Tuckahoe Swamp, Lenoir County." It had registered a ring about
its heart yearly throughout four and a half centuries before the coming of
Columbus, and gnarled and many limbed, would doubtless have seen centuries
longer of life had not the despolling lumbermen come. The tree was 100 feet in
height and 11 feet, one inch in diameter at the base. A cutting from its
largest parts was sent to the State Museum at Raleigh, and that at the court
house, cut 20 feet from the bottom, is five feet, one inch in diameter. The
transportation of the big stick from the Swamp to the mills hero was a tedious
undertaking, and was accomplished at much expense. From one 16 – foot cut was
secured 3,000 feet of lumber, and the entire tree will yield about 16,000 feet
or 80,000 shingles. It required three men at the mills a day and a half to
make two cuts of the monster for the thin sections on exhibition in Raleigh
and Kinston.
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