Where Was The Other Duelling Oak?

I'm a stickler for historic accuracy. This is a fact that either makes people love me or hate me. As I root around through history and learn how to research I start looking at things that are held close to our history-loving hearts and to my utter surprise I frequently find that facts dispute the tale. I'm not trying to prove or disprove anything; I'm just taking a walk though history and, as I do, I find myself becoming something of a myth buster.

Not that I ever mean to, it just happens.

The Duelling Oak

On one hand I wear the moniker with pride - on the other I wish people had just told the story accurately to begin with. Pictured at left is a tree in City Park we all know and love as "The Duelling Oak." To the immediate left of it is a brick structure (now demolished) long believed to have been the tomb of Louis Allard, the original owner of the property. (A belief which is often disputed.) The tree was one of two and they were known as "The Duelling Oaks" - the ground between them being called "le champ d'honneur" ("The Field of Honor") where hardy Creole lads would duel it out with swords and dirks and guns and such. This tree survives but its brother died in the 1940's after frenzied and desperate attempts to save it.

But where was it?

At left shows the existing tree;

at right the supposed location of

the other one.

In not one, but two tour guiding classes we were told that the other one stood out in the field in the direction of the entrance to City Park. As I was learning the City Tour I also heard this from the tour guide, who probably got it from the same teachers in the same classes. Having been told this by two sources whom I believed to be accurately trained in such matters (one of them being old enough to remember just where the other one was) and one tour guide, I have been identifying this as the location of the other oak tree for as long as I have been giving tours through City Park. But recently I found a photograph taken in 1901 that suggested a different location. From the angle of the shot it appeared as though the other tree was behind the New Orleans Museum Of Art (NOMA).

Photo by Cornelius Emerson Durkee, 1901

(Courtesy of the New Orleans City Archives,

Louisiana Division, N.O. Public Library)

The giveaway in the photo (at left) is the "tomb" and its angle in connection to the tree. NOMA would be to the extreme right in the photo. In the distance, between the "tomb" and the tree, the other oak is clearly visable. If this is, indeed, the other tree it would put it somewhere behind the museum rather than in front and off to the side. Initially, my thought was that the photographer simply misidentified the other tree and I blew it off as a mistake. Until I was rooting through City Directories and found a different photo that showed the same thing.

In the foreground is the tree which died;

(The "Tickle Bridge" is visible behind it.)

At left, rear, is the existing tree.

So, now we're two for two.

Finally I found a third photo that shows the trees from yet a different angle and this now proves that the tree was to the rear of NOMA and not out in front. Sadly, this reveals that people who are charged with the passing on of our history may not be so very qualified to do so.

None of this makes a lick of difference to the visitor who simply wants to revel in the stereoptype of television travel and history programs or to the tour guides who cling so tightly to the legends that we'll have to pry them from their cold, dead fingers. But to the historian, to the educator and to the tour guide who is dedicated to the preservation of New Orleans history (and also to the archaeologist, long after we are gone and forgotten) it makes an enormous difference. My personal dedication to historic accuracy brings out the Virgo in me as the obssession with detail takes hold. For me, it makes for a richer and more fascinating tour when we get these little details right and each one is another piece of the puzzle that tells us who we are and how we came to be.

The actual location of the other Duelling Oak.

Recent Posts

Categories

Where Was The Other Duelling Oak?