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Famous Old Tower of London: Wyllys

It stood upon the beautiful ter was gone. Sir Edmund Andross was grounds of Hon. Isaac W. Stuart, late the disconcerted. He declared the govern- Wyllys estate, in the southern part of that ment of Connecticut to be in his own city.

Mr. Stuart took great pains to preserve this valued relic of the original forests to New England, but more especially interesting as the tree in which the old British charter of Connecticut was secreted and preserved. hands, and that the colony was annexed to Massachusetts and other New England colonies, and appointed officers. Whilst he was doing this, Captain Jeremiah Wadsworth, a patriot of those times, was concealing the charter in the hollow of Wyllys Oak, now known as the Charter Oak.

At this time, the hollow in the trunk of the old oak was so large that a fire com- In 1689, King James abdicated, and on pany of twenty-seven full-grown men the ninth of May of that year Governor stood up in it together. Before Governor Treat and his associate officers established Wyllys came to America, he sent his the government of Connecticut under the steward forward to prepare a place for charter which had been preserved in the his residence. old hollow oak.