Our tree has a collection of names, dates and inscriptions, including those of all three of our children. It even has a large "Go Rebels," no doubt carved by a 1960s Cullowhee High loyalist. When our daughter Elizabeth was 3 or 4, she dubbed it the "name tree."
One particular name and date that intrigued me from the start was "R.O.Wilson, March 13, 1933." I met R.O. Wilson some years ago at the Speedwell General Store, but I never asked him about the inscription and when he carved it - until this week.
"Let me study a minute," R.O. said when I phoned him Tuesday night with my question.
After some consideration he allowed as how he contributed his mark to the tree sometime in the late 1950s. The date below his name, March 13, 1933, is his birthday. He remembered that he was alone when he carved on the tree.
"I was by myself," he said. "I must have been off in there ginseng hunting." It didn't take long to add his biographical sketch to the tree's index, he said, only a half hour - or maybe 45 minutes.
R.O. knows more about the tree's past than I do, of course, since I didn't even see it until 1979. When he carved his name, he could still read an inscription from 1929 that has long since grown up and out of view.
"Remember well and don't forget the summer of '29 - C.C. Hooper" it read.
The directive was carved by C.C. Hooper, who was a boy back in 1929 when the Great Depression hit. Hooper was hoeing corn with fellow Wilson Creek resident Fred Bryson the day he decided to preserve a little history on the beech tree, R.O. said.
The field where Hooper and Bryson spent a boyhood summer hoeing corn was a thick stand of pines when I first encountered the name tree. R.O. remembers when those pines were set out back in the '40s. Many of the pines were cleared recently to make way for a house.
As far as our name tree is concerned, it's not all that unusual. "People have carved on beech trees for years," R.O. said. "It was kind of a custom in those days for people to carve their names like that. There's a lot of old beech trees throughout the land with carvings and markings."
Our tree was about 24 inches thick when he carved his name, R.O. said. It approaches 3 feet these days.
While on the subject of history, R.O. told me that the area along Cullowhee Mountain Road from Speedwell to the foot of the mountain is called "Wilson Creek" after his great-granddad Henry Wilson, who owned some 700 acres on both sides of Cullowhee Creek.
While I've known for years that I lived "out Wilson Creek," I've never been able to find the name on any map.
Maybe tracking down others who left their marks on the "name tree" will lead to more knowledge about place names in this county.
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