- Jerome Teachout, 81, and O.J. Conger, 68, cut down the "Cannonball Tree" on Oct. 15, 1935. A six-pound cannonball was fired at the tree on April 27, 1865 as the train carrying Abraham Lincoln's casket passed through Jordan on its was from Washington D.C. to Springfield, Illinois. Courtesy of Maureen DoyleCourtesy of Maureen Doyle
In 1935, a pair of men cut down a towering elm tree on their farm in Jordan, N.Y. Lodged deep in the trunk, buried in layer upon layer of new wood, they found a six-pound cannonball -- a relic of a dreary night that would forever enshrine the tree in local lore.
“We had always heard of it referred to as ‘the cannonball tree,’” Albert Arnold told the Herald-Journal in 1997. Arnold happened to remember the tree being cut down when he was a teenager.
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