Dougherty County GaArchives Photo Place.....Lincoln Oak 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Steve Davis renodav@hotmail.com November 1, 2006, 10:05 am

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This story is rewritten from the Albany Herald dated May 15,1977 as the scanning
of the story makes some spots unreadable.  This rewrite is exactly as the
original with exception to fonts and layout.

Two Score and Some Years ago
The Lincoln Oak Stood Proud

By Gene Wood

	There’s nothing left of it now. Just a mound of sandy roots and charred rubble.
An ignominious heap of no-matter. To be leveled back into the earth by the
grinding "cats" which shoveled it down the rise where it once stood grandly as a
natural wonder…

	Albany’s Lincoln Oak.

A lot of people have never heard of the tree.
And, at the end of its life, it wasn’t much to look at.  An eyesore, perhaps,
But there are many who remember it in its leafy splendor.  Who feel a loss.

	The Lincoln Oak, back in the Twenties, bore a striking profile resemblance to
"Old Abe".
Located about 200 yards beyond Four Points, in from of what is now a two-story
blue frame home owned by Mrs. Howell Davis at 1210 Radium Springs Road, there
was no mistaking the likeness to the 16th president.
	By quirk, the craggy features were formed by and assemblage of limbs and
foliage. The hair, straight forehead, bushy brows, strong, bent nose, jutting
whiskers outlined some 40 feet tall with the trunk of the tree serving as a
pedestal for nature’s portraiture.
	According to Henry K. Gortatowsky, whose parent – the L. E. Gortatowskys _
moved to property not far from the site around 1926, the oak had been damaged in
some means. 
	He believes it grew in the resemblance of Lincoln during its recovery.
"it certainly wasn’t pruned or cut that way," said Mr. Gortatowsky.  "It was a
natural formation."
	Carl Rucker remembers the oak.
	"It was a well-known landmark hereabouts. People came from all over to see it."
 It was near the state’s largest spring which at the turn of the Twenties was
called Blue Springs, not Radium Springs. 
	"I guess that tree looked like Lincoln for some 10 to 12 years before its
foliage and limbs just naturally outgrew the image."
	What he can’t remember – not does his brother, Will- is the round souvenir
bearing a picture of the tree on one side, dated 1921, and a mirror on the
other, which was distributed "Compliments of Rucker’s Bakery, Albany, Georgia. 
It was an advertising promotion of their father, H.W. Rucker Sr.
	"We were both going to school then," said Will Rucker.  The Rucker brothers
later took over the bakery and ran it until 1951, when they retired. 
	Numerous postcards, with color photographs of the tree, were sold during the
period of its eminence.  One picture hangs in Radium Springs Casino.
	R. C. Wills, superintendent of parks and cemeteries, recalls the tree from the
time his family moved here in 1922 when he was in second grade.  He had a shock
coming to him several weeks ago.
	"I was driving home from my son Bobby’s place out in Radium when I noticed the
tree was down.  Didn’t know they were going to do it.  It really shook me up. 
	"They’re widening the road, and that’s the price of progress.  But let me tell
you, People used to call me to prune that oak; oh, that was after it had grown
out of its resemblance to Lincoln, and I just had to tell them I never would
touch a healthy limb on it.  A lot of tree surgery was performed on the oak over
the years, I believe they even had a tree surgeon come in once from New York. 
The cavities were filled, it was fertilized and such, Everything was done to
save it.   
"Lightning did it in. That was when the tree began deteriorating, some 30, 35
years ago.  It never was the same after that, But it grew.  Had about a 60-foot
spread.  The branches hung over the road.  You came to ‘expect’ it when you
drove out this way, you know?
"It was just as much a landmark to some of us in later days as it was when we
were kids, But I’ll never forget how it appeared in the moonlight when it was
the spitting image of Lincoln.  It caught your breath."
Mr. Wills stood in front of the Davis’ home, running his foot over the bare dirt
where the tree once grew.
"Back in 1935 when I was first married I wanted to rent this house.  This was
country then, Albany had a special feel about the place."
The roots of the old tree, which is reckoned to have been about 200 years old,
still spread, like arthritic fingers, clutching the wide curvature of the Davis
driveway, holding on to what once was its domain. 
Mrs. Davis and her late husband bought the house 17 years ago.
"I miss that tree so bad." She said.  "It used to be a wonderful shade tree.  It
had a beautiful spread.  When we first moved here, of course it didn’t look like
Lincoln anymore.  I complained about raking all the leaves, But I got over that."
She picked up a limb,
							Continued on Page 14D

	The Lincoln Oak
	Continued From Page 6D

	"To think that’s all that’s left."
	"Mind if I take it home with me?," asked Mr. Wills.  "I’d like it as a souvenir."
	"Oh sure," said Mrs. Davis.  She picked up another small limb. "Think I’ll keep
this for myself.
	"I knew the tree was coming down.  It had to because of the widening of the
road, But when I drove home that day after it was over, the road looked so
deserted.’ Oh, my goodness, they cut down the tree,’ I said to myself, And began
boo-hooing like a baby."
	Mrs. Davis owns the Rucker Bakery picture of the oak, Also a picture of it
taken by her nephew, David Jewell, "Tues, April 1977", just before it was
toppled by bulldozers.
	"Steve said, ‘Seems like one of the family is gone,’" said Mrs. Davis, speaking
of her son, Albany Patrolman Steve R. Davis.
	"It’s still hard to find our driveway," said her daughter, Mrs. James Williams,
"I can’t get used to the tree not being there.
	"It didn’t take long to uproot, Then it was shoved down the incline there." 
She pointed to some billboards in the cup of the road.
	In a gnarled pile, naught to mark it as anything special except a beer bottle
and discarded shovel, lay the remains of the once mighty oak. Just another
burned lump among several tree corpses shoveled up along the big "cats’" way.
	Cars zipped by on the still narrow road.  No one slowed to look. Nothing to
see. Nothing for many to remember.
	It’s rumored that "Believe It or Not" Ripley when appraised of the Lincoln Oak,
didn’t believe it. 
	There’s little left of it now, But believe it.
	It once was true. 

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To the readers of the above:

I know there may be spelling and grammatical errors in the above writing.  This
is exactly how it was published by The Albany Hearld and I thank Mr. Wood for
this writing.

As a footnote, I must say that as I read and type the words of Mr. Wood, it
brought back many memories that often created a lump in my throat. I had to stop
several times as I typed, as my computer screen became blurry from the clouds
developing in my eyes. That tree saw the passing of my father in 1970, the
leaving the nest of my brothers and sisters and finally me in 1972.  It was
survived by my mother as it passed, in 1977 and she, in 1995.  Now the house is
even gone and a day care has the land as a playground.  "Ole Link’ seemed to
love the kids being around. It’s a shame he is not there for them to appreciate. 

I had just turned six years old when we moved in to the old two-story house at
the end of 1959.  It wasn’t a beautiful place but it was my father and mother’s
dream to have a place of their own.  We all soon began to believe the place was
haunted but that is another story.

The Lincoln Oak meant many things to many people.  For one, how did a tree
resembling the 16th President end up in the then Confederate State of Georgia?
Was there a reason other than a quirk of nature? No one really knows.

This tree was my play ground and many a carpenter ant that called the tree home,
ended up in a squashed mess on the tree trunk from a clod of dirt or rock thrown
at them.  Many a plastic army soldier, Indian and cowboy fought enormous battles
in and around the base of the tree.  Many of toy trucks and tractors moved the
dirt and gravel from one side of the tree to the other.  When things were
boring, we would sit on the rock wall surrounding the tree, separating it from
the road and compete with each other as to what was the year make and style of
car coming around the curve a half mile away. When everyone got so good at
recognizing cars, we had to add whether the driver was young or old or male or
female.  

Every severe storm that came through our area would cause my mother to want us
all to be in the back part of the house from fear of the tree falling onto and
crushing the house. The mighty oak always stood his ground like I knew he always
would even though the trunk on the south side base had been hollowed out more
than halfway through the trunk from an apparent lightning strike.  This was an
old wound, much like a soldier who had lost a leg, he kept standing, to proud to
sit down.

Even though most say the tree didn’t look like Lincoln in later years, I could
see the same face I saw on a penny.  I think that as houses and neighborhoods
grew around it, people got where they couldn’t see the forest for the trees.  In
other words, they just were too close to recognize the shape of the tree.  

The Lincoln Oak was a Red Oak that is prolific in the south. The tree was taller
than the two-story house, which I estimated at 60 or so feet as the house was at
least 40 feet high.  The base of the tree at the ground and the trunk of the
tree had to be at least 30 or more feet in circumference.  The grayish black
bark of the tree was as hard as any tree not damaged and would occasionally eat
some of the flesh from my hands and arms as I played under the tree. 

The postcards and pictures of the Lincoln Oak have been changed from the actual
direction the tree faced.  If you know the area and the pictures, it seems to be
facing east, toward the direction of the house.  Actually it was facing north
and people use to say that it faced that way because Lincoln did not really want
to be in the south and he was looking towards his home.  The actual foliage of
the tree is 100 % accurate as it really looked like that from a distance, even
in my time. 

I’ve always heard that there was only one Lincoln Oak.  I was proud to grow up
under it. I still talk about it from time to time and many people who have lived
in Albany all their lives, don’t know anything about it. Someone would ask where
I lived and I would say in the two-story house with the Lincoln Oak out front. 

As I said there was only one Lincoln Oak but in the house I live in now and have
for over 20 years, has a Red Oak Tree in the front yard.  It may be 50 or 60
years old and not as big but it does have a natural shape to it similar to the
Lincoln Oak.  In another 100 or so years we may have another.  It too, is
perched on a hill, precariously close to the roadway and virtually by itself. 
Maybe ‘Ole Link" has followed me or I found him again.

I never studied Lincoln the President.  I am not a follower or believer in his
Presidency as I never cared to obtain the knowledge of the reasons for his actions.

I have and do believe in the strength, flexibility and steadfastness of one of
natures Icons.   The Lincoln Oak.

By: Steve R. Davis, Sr.
       Albany Georgia
       10-29-06



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