Historical Name: Bigelow’s Battery
Common Name: Swamp White Oak
Latin Name: Quercus bicolor
The Bigelow’s Battery Swamp White Oak witnessed some of the fiercest fighting at Gettysburg, the pivotal battle site of the Civil War. Union General Daniel Sickles established his headquarters under the tree at Trostle Farm on July 2, 1863. A sketch made at the time of the battle by a soldier in Captain John Bigelow’s Massachusetts artillery battery shows the tree shading Sickles and his staff as he issued orders. Advancing Mississippi infantrymen overran the battery which lost almost half of its 92 men, four of its six guns and 80 of its 88 horses. This tree was grown from a seed taken from that Swamp White Oak, and was planted into UCNJ’s Historic Tree Grove in 1997.
(text adapted from American Forests)