County of marker: St. Charles County
Date erected: October 1999
Erected by: Peggy Bradbury, the Town of Matson
Historian: Ken Kemper
THE DIVINE ELM AND THE JUDGEMENT TREE
The precedent for Boone holding court under an elm tree was set at the settling of Boonesborough in 1775, south of present-day Lexington, Kentucky. The branches of a huge elm -- so large the settlers feared the toil of cutting it down -- sheltered the first church service and the first American legislative meeting west of the Allegheny mountains. The settlers of Boonesborough nicknamed it the Divine Elm.
Richard Henderson, one of the original settlers, wrote, "Thank God! The tree is mine...This same tree is to be our church, state-house, council-chamber, and etc... Hope by Sunday sennight to perform divine service for the first time in publick manner, and that to a set of scoundrels who scarcely believe in God or fear a devil, if we were to judge from most of their looks, words and actions."
THE DANIEL BOONE JUDGEMENT TREE
About 200 yards east of Highway 94, and about 20 feet south of the north line of the Boone Spanish land grants [meaning Nathan Boone's Grant], is the site of the Daniel Boone Judgement Tree. Daniel Boone held court under this tree from 1800 to 1804, when he was the Spanish syndic for the Femme Osage District.
It is believed there were two Judgement Trees. The first one (above) was near the town of Missouriton, which was started in 1818 by Daniel Boone and his oldest living son, Daniel Morgan Boone. (The town was washed away in the 1800s by the Missouri River.) [ED: The State Historical Society of Missouri and the Lewis & Clark Journals of 1804 name this town as the "Boone's Settlement Landing"]. The second one is believed to have been on property owned by his youngest son, Nathan Boone, after 1804, when Daniel Boone lived there and held an appointment as an American judge. The Nathan Boone Home is now the Historic Daniel Boone Home, Inc. [Ed: Daniel never lived in this home, he lived in a cabin at Matson on Nathan's property].
The site of the Judgement Tree at present-day Matson was located for the historian ken Kemper in 1987 by Mrs. Hilda Stelzer. The tree, which had a massive girth, was still lining in 1926, when the Stelzers moved into a linmestone house, visible to the east-northeast of this site. Mrs. Stelzer recalled that a few years later, lighting struck and killed the Judgement Tree. In 1951, the tree was blown over by a storm. Mrs. Barbara Koenig also remembered the tree, which was on family property. Her husband sawed the tree up t remove it from their field, where it had been lying for a number of years. On this board is a copy of a photograph from the files of the State Historical Society of Missouri.
A Boone Sign Tree, with the name "D.Boon" carved into it, stood on bluff property owned by Daniel Morgan Boone, near present-day location of Sugar Creek Winery. Wilfred Wissmann recalls that the tree was cut up.