The patriarch of Fort Wayne’s apple trees was bearing fruit long before General Wayne appeared on the scene. When Chief Richardville of the Miami Indians was born in a hut near the tree in 1761, the apple tree stood in the midst of the Miami village, Kekionga. The city grew and prospered; late in the nineteenth century the venerable tree perished at an estimated age of one hundred and fifty years. Although the exact location is unknown, it stood in the Lakeside residential district of Fort Wayne. An article in the May, 1862, issue of HARPER’S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE reveals that the trunk of the ancient tree measured twenty feet in diameter in 1860. New Harmony, Indiana, the scene of two remarkable social experiments, had two trees worthy of mention. In 1803 the Harmonists, under the leadership of George Rapp, separated from the Lutheran church in Germany and migrated to Pennsylvania. In 1815 the sect moved again; the members decided on a site which they called “Harmonie” on the Wabash River in Indiana. Upon disembarking at their destination, they slept under an oak tree, which was later named “The Rappite Oak.” Rapp built his own house near the tree. The Harmonists were so successful in their communal living experiment that jealous neighbors made life unpleasant for them, and they returned to Pennsylvania in 1824. But the oak survived until 1900 and outlived all of the Harmonists, whose numbers dwindled rapidly because of their strict adherence to celibacy. Robert Owen (1771-1858), another social experimenter, purchased the settlement from Rapp and renamed it “New Harmony.” Unlike the Harmonists, Owen and his followers were humanists. Their community did not flourish long, but while in existence it was the home of a brilliant group of scientists. Among them were Thomas Say, a noted zoologist, Thomas Nutthall, a botanist, and William Maclure, one of the world’s outstanding geologists. All three men are commemorated by an Osage Orange tree planted in New Harmony in 1826. Say planted the tree and Nutthall conferred its scientific name, “Maclura pomifera,” in honor of Maclure. The tree was still alive in the 1920’s, a memorial to an experiment, which, although short lived, has had a lasting influence upon American democracy. Several trees in the Great Lakes area were famous for their connections with treaty negotiations between the white settlers and the Indians. Just two days after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Alexander and William Macomb purchased Grosse Ile and several smaller islands at the mouth of the Detroit River. The Fox and Potawatomi Indians signed a treaty ceding the islands in return for tobacco, blankets, and a small sum of money. The document was signed under a linden tree, which survived the event a century and a quarter. It was felled by a violent storm on July 3, 1901; the site has been marked by a tablet.