FOR THE FIRST TIME

To date, the first known printed newspaper mention of Fremont’s Tree (now the Giant) appeared in the December 13, 1851 newspaper, the Polynesian of Honolulu, Hawaii. The article, entitled “California – Agriculture”, provided descriptions of a variety of amazingly large California produce. Among the boasts was “one redwood tree in the valley, known as Fremont’s tree, [which] measures over fifty feet in circumference, and is nearly 300 feet high.” Strangely the article also touted an onion weighing twenty-one pounds grown by a Mr. James Williams and on the same land a turnip “which equaled exactly in size the head of a flour barrel.” No wonder the first reports of the immense California redwoods were often dismissed. 

The information was taken from an address delivered by a gentleman named A. Williams, Esq. before an agricultural and mineralogical exhibition in San Francisco. The event was organized by C. A. Shelton who presented prizes, such as silver goblets, for the best varieties of vegetables and grains. In the December 27, 1851 New-York Tribune version of the presentation, Williams said the vegetable and redwood claims came from a statement signed by twelve citizens of Santa Cruz County described as “gentlemen of unquestionable integrity” (Messrs. McLean, Gibson, Mallison, Peck, Clements, Pedrict, Mills, Stevens, McHenry, Sanborn, Kista, and Loveland).

I was intrigued to find out more about C.A. Shelton who supposedly organized the 1851 agricultural and mineralogical meeting in San Francisco. I came across a 1981 paper by Joseph Ewan published by the Harvard University Herbaria. Ewan’s research traced a little-known California Gold Rush botanist, C.C. Shelton, who tracked down specimens for Princeton botany professor John Torrey. By 1851 Shelton became the California traveling companion of artist Paul Emert “to sketch the beauties of California agriculture.” Shelton who believed that California produce was superior to all others, collected thousands of specimens of the state’s products. In an 1851 Wilmington, North Carolina newspaper article, Shelton boasted of two pound, not twenty-one pound, onions grown by Robert Smith at Mission San Jose. It appears that the original exaggerations of vegetable sizes can be blamed on later newspaper reporters rather than Shelton. The Alta California reported on October 4, 1851 that Shelton, “the botanist and mineralogist, has made the [Vigilance] Committee a valuable donation from his collection” toward creation of a public display.

 
Unfortunately, Shelton’s botanical career was cut short. On April 4, 1853, Shelton was a passenger aboard the ill-fated steamboat, the Jenny Lind, when the ship’s boiler exploded. The botanist, listed onboard as C.A. Shelton, was killed instantly. Journalist James Mason Hutchings wrote that Shelton “seemed about to realize the fulfillment of his cherished hopes, to reap the reward of his persevering efforts … Alas! Poor Shelton!” From this research it appears to me that C.C. Shelton was the same man who set up the scientific meeting which resulted in the first known newspaper description of the Giant as Fremont’s Tree. 

Sources:  "Who Was John Torrey's 'Prof'' Shelton Lost on the Steamboat Jenny Lind?" by Joseph Ewan from the Occasional Papers of the Farlow Herbarium of Cryptogamic Botany No. 16, A Volume in Honor of Geneva Sayre on the Occasion of her 70th Birthday (June, 1981); “Farming in California,” Weekly Commercial (Wilmington, North Carolina), November 21, 1851; Image of C.C. Shelton from Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion, September 16, 1854; postcard of the Giant from the Author's Personal Collection.