Happy Birthday, America! In honor of 250 years since 1776, the Ohio Commission for the U.S. Semi quincentennial (America 250) has chosen a different theme each month to highlight and celebrate Ohio’s rich history. Each month, The Dawes Arboretum’s History Team will be dropping a new collection to our archives that align with America and Ohio’s 250th anniversary monthly theme! This month, we’re celebrating Ohio Creates: Arts, Culture and Literature.
Two Tree Dedications from The Dawes Arboretum are related to the art world. Tree Dedications are chosen by the Board of Trustees to “honor individuals or groups of outstanding achievement in the stream of human history, or events of significance to The Dawes Arboretum.
The Arboretum’s eighth Tree Dedication was for cartoonists Billy Ireland and John T. McCutcheon. Ireland was employed at the Columbus Dispatch and McCutcheon at the Chicago Tribune.
The tree was coined “The Cartoonist Tree” and was a double sugar maple. In 1929, the Board of Trustees at Dawes published a small book titled “The Cartoonist” as an added tribute to the two artists.
The sixty fifth literature-related tree was dedicated to Martha Kinney Cooner, the founder of the Ohioana library by Mrs. M. Y. Newcomb. The Ohioana Library connects readers and Ohio writers through awards, festivals and publications and much more. In 1963, a red buckeye was dedicated to her in recognition of her contribution to the humanities in Ohio.
To see these archival materials and more on the digital archive, click this link or go to the Advanced Search page and type out “America 250-Ohio” in Search Terms to view the entire collection. For questions concerning the digital archive, please email daweshistory@dawesarb.org.
To learn more about Tree Dedications, please visit our Dawes History page. To learn how to find Tree Dedications on Arboretum Explorer, please read here.
Are you interested in doing in-person research at The Arboretum? Do you have a history question that you can’t find the answer online? Don’t hesitate to use the Department’s History Research Request Form, where you can get answers to all of your Dawes history-related questions and research requests.