Our Old Apple Tree (Defiance County History 1883 Page 207)

Drawing of  Defiance French and Indian Apple Tree 1860s

Defiance Apple Tree marker today.

      We were at Fort Defiance two years (1824) before we had a school. Then a Mr. Smith came with his family and moved into an old trading house, and opened school in an old blacksmith shop that stood near Shane,s apple tree. The tree was full of apples. Mr. Rice claimed the apples, but the scholars were allowed to play under it. It gave a fine shade. The trunk was short and thick, the top large and spreading. The tradition of the tree then was that the wigwam where Shane was born stood near there, and on that day his father planted this tree, and when Shane was a little boy, the Indian boys when mad at him would break down his tree to spite him, which accounted for it shape.

    Shane was then a man fifty years old, living at Shane's Prairie, on the St. Mary's River (Darke County, Ohio).

                           Ruth Shirley  Austin     1883