This is a story that is almost certainly not true, though I wish it were.
In Athens, Georgia, there is a tree that legend says is its own owner, given to itself about 200 years ago as a mark of the donor’s affection for the tree whose shade he had long enjoyed.
According to the story, and on a stone at the tree’s foot, Col. William H. Jackson granted a deed:
I, W. H. Jackson, of the county of Clarke, of the one part, and the oak tree … of the county of Clarke, of the other part: Witnesseth, That the said W. H. Jackson for and in consideration of the great affection which he bears said tree, and his great desire to see it protected has conveyed, and by these presents do convey unto the said oak tree entire possession of itself and of all land within eight feet of it on all sides.
The story first appeared in a local newspaper in 1890, saying that the deed dated to 1832. The story appears to have been known to a number of old-timers, who gave dates from 1820 to 1832. The original deed, if it actually existed, is unknown now. At the time, the land was countryside, not yet on city streets.
Over the years, age and erosion took a toll on the tree, estimated to be somewhere between 150 and 400 years. Its base was shored up several times, but by the early 1900s it was clearly declining; when it fell in a storm in 1942 it may have already been dead for several years, although it appears healthy enough in this 1930s postcard view.
After the tree fell, members of a local garden club who had cultivated new trees from acorns of the original tree, arranged to have one of them stand in for its parent, as the inheritor to the title. That’s the tree that’s there now. Legally, it’s said, the deed would never have been valid because both parties to such a transfer have to have the legal capacity to act, which a tree doesn’t.
But that doesn’t seem to bother the local government or the Athens’ Junior Ladies Garden Club, which serves as its ‘primary advocate.’ The city’s view? “However defective this title may be in law, the public recognized it. In that spirit, it is the stated position of the Athens-Clarke County Unified Government that the tree, in spite of the law, does indeed own itself. It is the policy of the city of Athens to maintain it as a public street tree.”
