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The Romance of the Copper Beech

A giant tree - one of two moved from Massachusetts to Long Island in 1915 - helps tell the story of Long Island's love affair with trees

By Irene Virag | Staff Writer

April 13, 2003

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He sees the great copper beech in all its seasons, in all it moods, in all its majesty and he thinks of himself as its protector. He sees it in the lush heat of summer when its leaves are so purple they're almost black, and in the cold light of winter when its silver-gray limbs are touched by snow. He admires the complexity of its structure, the heft and power of its presence and the regal sweep of its reaching branches. He treasures its beauty.

"In the warming days of mid-April there's a slight tinge of copper when the buds swell," he says. "And then the leaves unfurl and the tree is transformed. The leaves are glossy and when the sun hits them in a certain way, the whole tree shimmers."

Vinnie Simeone is not the first person to love the tree that stands on the rolling lawn of Planting Fields Arboretum in Oyster Bay. The tree officially known as "The Fairhaven Beech" - the tree that was the subject of a great odyssey.

This is its story. The bittersweet tale of the tree that holds court outside a stone mansion begins in a gilded era of wealth and privilege and continues into today's more egalitarian times. It is the story of a tree and more than that. It is, perhaps, a metaphor for all our trees and the way they branch through our hearts and our lives and our landscapes.

The way they live - and the way they die.

* * *

The story ran in the Fairhaven (Mass.) Star on March 20, 1915:

The job of moving the largest trees the longest distance of which there is any record has just been completed. The two giant copper beeches that formerly stood within the grounds of the H.H. Rogers estate are now rearing their lofty branches on the estate of William R. Coe at Oyster Bay. The job cost $4,000, an expenditure for mere sentiment's sake, for Mrs. Coe, a daughter of the late H.H. Rogers, used to play under the trees as a child. The trees traveled a distance of some 300 miles by water and a few miles by land to reach their destination at Oyster Bay, known to fame because of Theodore Roosevelt and otherwise distinguished because it is the home of so many millionaires that everyday the Long Island Rail Road operates what is locally known as the "Millionaires' Train" between Oyster Bay and New York.

There is no written record of how deeply Mai Rogers Coe felt about the copper beeches in the fading winter of 1915 - no diary entries, no correspondence, no inscribed memories of dreams dreamed or books read beneath the canopy of purple leaves.

But like motes of sunlight falling on the spreading branches, there are hints of the way it was in the life of a woman born to wealth and high society who in the prime of her adulthood felt she was old enough and rich enough to do what she wanted whether the object of her caring involved sapphires or shade trees.

Nor is there a chronicled epiphany on the part of her husband, William Robertson Coe, a self-made insurance magnate, a widower who married a Standard Oil heiress he met on a trans-Atlantic crossing. And who several years later bought a 325-acre estate on the North Shore of Long Island for their family.

He was an English immigrant of working-class origins. If he found love and money in America, he also cultivated a lifestyle reminiscent of the gentry of his homeland. He was a sportsman and plant collector and his interest in horticulture was evident throughout the Oyster Bay estate called Planting Fields. He, too, cared about the copper beeches.

On Feb. 3, 1915, he wrote a letter to his oldest son, Robert, at boarding school in New Hampshire. He scolded the boy for spending $15.27 on an autograph of Ulysses S. Grant and asked if he was wearing his winter underclothing. "It is snowing heavily here," he wrote. "The big trees are due to arrive at Oyster Bay today or tomorrow. I suppose they will have a hard time getting them up to the place with the heavy snow on the roads."

They had a very hard time. The trees had been dug up from the shaded grounds of the summer estate of Mai's father, Henry Huttleston Rogers, a titan of Standard Oil. The tycoon who befriended Mark Twain and financed Helen Keller's education and underwrote Booker T. Washington's schools and whose enemies called him "Hell Hound" died in 1909 and five years later his only son, Henry, was selling the family's 85-room summer home in Fairhaven, Mass. The house was being dismantled and the property subdivided. A road was slated to go right through the copper beeches. It is conceivable that Mai thought it would go right through her father's heart - and perhaps her own.

The 50-foot-tall trees were uprooted in December 1914 and their massive root balls encased in huge wooden crates. They were already more than a half century old and weighed 28 tons each, and they waited for a month on the fogbound wharf before a lighter was ready. On Feb. 5, landscape architect A.R. Sargent, who supervised the move, wrote Coe: "One tree is actually on the boat and the other is ready to be put on high tide tomorrow morning. I know you will be glad when they arrive at their final resting place."

When the skies cleared and the seas calmed, the crew refused to make the trip for fear that the heavy trees with their 40-foot spreads would capsize the barge. In the end, towing tugs were hitched alongside. It took 2 1/2 days before the living cargo arrived in Oyster Bay.

Even then, as their millionaire owner fumed over the cost and delay, the adventure was far from over. For four days, the uprooted trees - already buffeted by wind and salt seas - stayed aboard the lighter while a half-dozen lawyers hired by Coe negotiated with utility companies to take down all the wires along the 2 1/2-mile route to Planting Fields. Roads had to be widened to accommodate the trees and Coe had to pay for replacing the wires. As the Fairhaven Star reported, "Only Mr. Coe knows how much he had to pay various abutters on the streets who objected to having the trees pass at the expense of their own trees. The pocketbook of Mr. Coe was the open sesame that overcame all objections." The journey through town took 12 working days, and according to one story, a team of 72 horses helped transport the two copper beeches.

The trip took its toll on both trees. It was March before they were planted. Only one survived.

Wind sighs in the copper beech on a chill November morning 87 years later. Two men stand under the sweeping umbrella of the tree whose origin is wreathed in mystery but that is believed to be more than 150 years old. One of them is the man who thinks of himself as its protector, who admires it in all its seasons and all its beauty. His name is Vinnie Simeone and he is the acting director of Planting Fields Arboretum and State Historic Park.

He first saw the copper beech when he visited the arboretum in the fall of 1986 as a horticulture student at Farmingdale State University. "I was instantly enamored. The first thing that came to my mind was that this is a noble tree." Six years later, the typographer's son from Islip came to work as an intern at the arboretum and the copper beech took root in his everyday world.

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The Romance of the Copper Beech

A giant tree - one of two moved from Massachusetts to Long Island in 1915 - helps tell the story of Long Island's love affair with trees

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