A white oak with (some version of) legal ownership over itself and the ground it stands on.
Sometime between the 16th and 18th century, between the north and middle forks of the Oconee River, an acorn germinated on the Muscogee land that would become Athens Georgia. It grew among a forest of many trees; oaks, cypress, holly, maple, birch, sycamore, and pine. Almost all of those trees were cut in the subsequent centuries– first, to clear for farmland, and then again for the grid of homes and sidewalks that now form the Dearing Street Historic District, in which the Tree stands.
American cities of the 19th century were not particularly green places, and almost all of their street trees were planted after the 1880s; it is very rare to find an old-growth tree that the city was constructed around. Perhaps this is what the professor William Henry Jackson recognized in the tree, when he deeded it ownership of itself (and the land it stood on) in accordance to "the great affection" he bore it. Or perhaps not– despite this legal transaction "happening sometime between 1820 and 1832", the first written record of the The Tree That Owns Itself is from a 1890 newspaper article on the subject.
Was the story a part of local folklore? Did this article invent it whole cloth? Was it a bid to save the tree from developers? An attempt to get a newsworthy front page? Nobody seems to know. More unclear even still is the legal status of the deed, which has either been lost or never existed. And if it did exist, it would not truly grant the tree its own ownership– trees are not, under U.S. law, considered legal persons. Furthermore, the lot of the erstwhile Jackson's house may or may not have ever contained the tree (it currently stands in the right-of-way). And finally, The Tree That Owns Itself fell in 1942, and was replaced with a seedling grown from one of its acorns 5 years later. It is now known as (The Son of) The Tree That Owns Itself.
Does all of this threaten the tree's status of self-ownership? Well, to put it simply– no. All ownership is simply general agreement backed by power. And everyone seems to agree that The Tree really does Own Itself.
It stands in an 8'x8' square, in a residential neighborhood that was once a forest, marked with a plaque that reads:
FOR AND IN CONSIDERATION
OF THE GREAT LOVE I BEAR
THIS TREE AND THE GREAT DESIRE
I HAVE FOR ITS PROTECTION
FOR ALL TIME, I CONVEY ENTIRE
POSSESSION OF ITSELF AND
ALL LAND WITHIN EIGHT FEET
OF THE TREE ON ALL SIDES
- WILLIAM H. JACKSON (c. 1832)
