Historic marker for Jefferson’s Chief Logan Elm rescued

After learning about the McKinley Elm that had been planted in the yard of Jefferson High School to commemorate Gov. William McKinley’s presidential campaign speech of 1892, I found another tree that was planted to honor Indian Chief Logan (1723- 1780).
The mystery was why we would honor an Indian chief from Pickaway County and why was Jefferson chosen to have the tree?
Most folks I questioned vaguely remembered the McKinley Elm, but no one would recall the Logan Elm. One reader was present at the cutting down of the McKinley Elm in 1951 when she was ten.
Sadly, the history of the Logan Elm has been lost as well as the story of how Jefferson came to get a seedling from the famous elm and its important link to Ohio’s history.
Through the files in the research library at the Jefferson Historical Society, I was able to locate a few newspaper clippings and following that trail to discover who Chief Logan was and how Jefferson was able to receive one of the seedlings from the Logan Elm.
The simplest explanation can be found in the 1939 hardback book “Ohio Builds a Nation” by Samuel Hardin Steele. Under the chapter, “Where Chief Logan Spoke,” Stelle states that in the autumn of 1774, Virginia Gov. Captain Dunmore made an attempt to end the Indian troubles of Ohio by drafting a severe treaty between the whites and the Indians. The severe treaty stated that the “savages were to return all whites held by them and to immediately end their attacks on the Virgina frontier; to pay for property they had destroyed, return all they held in their possession; molest no traffic on the Ohio River; refrain from crossing the Ohio except for commercial reasons and to furnish hostages as a guarantee the treaty would not be broken.”
The false part included Dunmore guaranteeing the Indians that the whites would respect the Ohio River as a boundary line. The chiefs were asked to come to a “peace conference” to sign the treaty. Chief Logan would not attend. His decision was based on a tragedy. Fourteen of his family members including his mother, sister and children were murdered by a rogue group of Virgina colonists called Long Knives at what would become known as the Yellow Creek Massacre.
Afterwards, Chief Logan went on a killing spree throughout the settlements to avenge the death of his family. No one was ever brought to justice for the killing of his family.
Now Chief Logan was being asked to sign a peace treaty. He refused to attend, but when an interpreter for Captain Dunmore approached him, Chief Logan walked a short distance to a sprawling elm tree and gave a passionate speech that has become known as “Logan’s Lament.”
The interpreter wrote down his words and read them at the peace meeting. The speech was memorized for years by hundreds of schoolchildren and yet, today, I doubt there is a school-age child who has ever heard of the great chief who had strived for peace with the white man and encouraged others to do so.
One line in Chief Logan’s speech is heart breaking. It even spoke to the heart of Thomas Jefferson. Logan said, “I appeal to any white man to say, if ever he entered Logan’s cabin hungry, and he gave him not meat; if ever he came cold and naked, and he clothed him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the whites, that my countrymen pointed as they passed, and said, Logan is the friend of the white men.”
And yet, at the heartbreaking loss of his entire family, Chief Logan added, “There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one.”
Unfortunately, the treaty signing led to further expansion of the white man into the Northwest Territory as the Indians were pushed out.
As the years passed, the elm tree under which Chief Logan had spoken to the interpreter continued to grow. In 1880, the first stone pillar with a bronze marker was placed at the site.
In 1912, a large group of historical-minded people gathered under the huge tree to dedicate the Logan Elm State Memorial. In the group were representatives of several Indian tribes. About 5,000 participants attended the ceremony. In 1919, Logan’s speech would be engraved in stone with a likeness of the old elm on a bronze marker.
In my research, I finally found how Jefferson got a seedling from Logan’s Elm. In the 1920s through the mid ‘40s, seeds and cuttings from the tree were propagated at a nursery at the Wooster Agriculture Experiment Station and then planted in the Scioto State Forest south of Chillicothe. In 1935, more than 100 of those seedlings were uprooted and through several organizations, the seedlings were offered to all 88 counties in Ohio if they wanted them.
One of those organizations was the Ohio Federation of Women’s Clubs (OFWC).
I found a news clipping from the Jefferson Gazette of 1958 that states the historic Logan Elm had been planted 20 years before (1938) and a new bronze and concrete marker was being installed below the tree.
The article further states that the Logan Elm seedling was accepted in 1935 by the Ladies Literary Class of Jefferson. It was planted and cared for at the home of the late Mrs. Hiram Starkey (Margaret was the widow of lawyer, Hiram Starkey). Three years later, the tree was big enough and healthy enough to be planted on the lawn of the former Jefferson High School in 1938.
It was an important and historical moment. All the school children went to the auditorium for a presentation program led by Mrs. Frank Douglass, president of the Ladies Literary Club, who gave the history of the Logan Elm. She mentioned that Logan’s speech had become famous because of its “pathetic expression of human despair caused by the ingratitude and cruelty of the white man.”
Mrs. W.W. Woodbury sang “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer and L. M. Finley, school principal, accepted the tree on behalf of the school. The person with the longest service at the school, Robert Shoaf, accepted the tree on behalf of the faculty. According to the article, since the dedication of the tree twenty years before, Robert Shoaf had the responsibility of caring for the elm and despite the infestation of the elm tree disease in the elms in the area and state, the Logan Elm Tree was still surviving in 1958.
The original Logan Elm tree the chief had spoken under continued to grow until 1964 when it succumbed to the Dutch Elm disease. It measured 104 feet tall, with a circumference of 23 feet and a crown spread of 154 feet. When it was cut down, small souvenir size pieces were given out by the Ohio Historical Society.
In 2024, the 250th anniversary of Logan’s speech was recognized with a ceremony in the Logan Park in Pickaway County, just south of Circleville.
In the Ohio Supreme Court building, a bronze bias relief of Logan and the elm tree is on display. Several Logan Parks commemorate the Chief’s life and other instrumental Indians caught up in Dunmore’s War.
I do not know when our Logan Elm tree, grown from a seedling, was felled and whether it was for progress or disease, but perhaps a reader knows that story. We do know that one day a local resident came to the Jefferson Historical Society and presented us with the bronze plaque that once rested beneath the Logan Elm. You can see the plaque in the research room of the society building on East Jefferson Street.
Chief Logan was a man before his time. He believed in peace and did all he could to bring it about but when his family was taken from him, his revenge overtook him. But he will be remembered as a man who loved his people and sought the best for them with the little power he was reduced to.
Historical markers are reminders of the past and help us remember the cost our ancestors were willing to bear to see right prevail.

Correction: In last week’s column, I incorrectly stated that William Jennings Bryan defended teacher, John Scopes, in the 1925 famous Monkey Trial on evolution. Bryan was the prosecuting attorney; Clarence Darrow was defending John Scopes.