The Liberty Tree

The most famous tree in American history, and the family’s connection to both sides of it.

The Tree

An American elm, planted in 1646, sixteen years after Boston’s founding. ^[1] It stood at the corner of Essex and Orange Street, now the intersection of Washington and Essex streets, near Boston Common, on the main road into town from the fortifications on Boston Neck. ^[1][2] Travellers entering Boston by land over the Neck passed this tree.

The ground around it was known as Liberty Hall. ^[1] When the tree was finally cut down in August 1775, it produced fourteen cords of firewood, ^[1][2] roughly 1,800 cubic feet of stacked wood. That single number shows how massive this elm had become: 129 years of growth on Boston’s main thoroughfare, a living monument before anyone thought to call it one.

The Symbol

For a decade before the Revolution, the Liberty Tree was where Boston’s resistance took shape, where words became action and grievances became defiance.

• 1765. August 14. First protest against the Stamp Act. At daybreak an effigy of Andrew Oliver, the designated Stamp Act distributor, was found hanging from the branches. ^[1][2] The demonstration is generally credited to the Loyal Nine, a small club of Boston tradesmen who met in a counting room beside the tree. ^[3] Under its branches, as one Boston historian put it, resistance to the Crown’s measures “first showed itself by public acts.” ^[1]
• 1766. February 14. The tree is pruned. The Sons of Liberty had the elm pruned, and on February 20 a copper plate was fixed to the trunk: “This tree was planted in the year 1646, and pruned by order of the Sons of Liberty, Feb. 14th, 1766.” ^[1] When news of the Stamp Act’s repeal reached Boston, the town celebrated on May 19, and lanterns were hung in the branches. ^[1][2]
• 1768. June. The Liberty Riot. After customs officers seized John Hancock’s sloop Liberty, a crowd roughed up the collector and comptroller and burned the collector’s pleasure boat on the Common. ^[4]
• 1770. March 5. Boston Massacre. On the night of the shooting, a party of soldiers hurrying into town knocked a townsman aside “a little to the southward of Liberty-tree,” as one of the depositions printed by the town recorded. ^[5]
• 1774. Tar and featherings. In January 1774 a mob tarred and feathered the customs officer John Malcom and carted him through the streets to Liberty Tree and on to the gallows on the Neck. ^[6]
• 1775. August. The tree was cut down by Loyalists and British soldiers; Boston’s histories name the leader of the party as one Job Williams. One soldier was killed in the process. The great elm produced fourteen cords of firewood. ^[1][2]
• After the war. Liberty Pole erected. Patriots erected a Liberty Pole on the stump where the tree had stood; a second pole replaced it on July 2, 1826. ^[1][2]
• 1824–25. The Marquis de Lafayette, during his celebrated American tour, declared in Boston: “The world should never forget the spot where once stood Liberty Tree, so famous in your annals.” ^[1]

The Family at the Tree. The Coffin Connection

Nathaniel Coffin Sr., a great-great-grandson of Tristram Coffin of Nantucket (b. 1605), ^[7][9] was the King’s Cashier of Customs in Boston. ^[7][6][8] He lived near the corner of Essex Street and Rainsford Lane, steps from the Liberty Tree, which stood “near by, in front” of the house. ^[7][6][1] According to Coffin family accounts, his son Nathaniel Coffin Jr. was responsible for having the tree cut down in 1775; the standard Boston histories instead name one Job Williams as the leader of the party. ^[7][6][1][2] Nathaniel Sr. and his family left with the British army for Halifax in 1776, ^[8][6] and he was among the Loyalists named in the Massachusetts Banishment Act of September 1778. ^[6]

General John Coffin, another son of Nathaniel Sr., then a young ship’s master and later a full general in the British Army, landed British troops at Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775. When the fighting started, according to a family memoir, he grabbed his boat’s tiller and charged into the battle. ^[6][8][1]

Meanwhile, on the Patriot side of the same family tree:

William Green, adjutant of Prescott’s Massachusetts Regiment, was wounded at Bunker Hill defending against those very troops. ^[10] Capt. Francis Green served nearly seven years in the Continental Army, from his lieutenant’s commission in the 1st Massachusetts on January 1, 1777, to the regiment’s disbanding in November 1783. ^[10]

According to family tradition, still under research, the Coffins who were blamed for cutting down the Liberty Tree and the Greens who fought for independence share the same ancestor: Tristram Coffin, who arrived in Massachusetts in 1642. ^[9]

This is what the Revolution looked like, families divided, neighbors on opposite sides, history written by both the winners and the losers.

The archive documents both sides because honest research requires it. It leads with what it found, not what it claims.

In Popular Culture. Johnny Tremain

The Liberty Tree was immortalized in Disney’s 1957 film Johnny Tremain, ^[11] based on Esther Forbes’ 1943 novel, winner of the 1944 Newbery Medal. ^[11][12] In a pivotal scene, the Sons of Liberty march through Boston after the Tea Party to hang lanterns on the Liberty Tree while a chorus sings “The Liberty Tree,” with music by George Bruns and words by Tom Blackburn. ^[13][14]

Walt Disney was so inspired by the story that he planned to build “Liberty Street” at Disneyland, a colonial-era annex behind Main Street USA, announced in 1956. ^[13][15] The project never materialized at Disneyland, but after his death it evolved into Liberty Square at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, which opened in 1971. ^[15] A live oak tree transplanted from elsewhere on the Disney property serves as that park’s Liberty Tree, adorned with thirteen lanterns, one for each original colony. ^[14][16]

Walt’s own daughter Sharon Disney made her feature-film debut in a small role in the film. ^[11]

The Site Today

The spot where the Liberty Tree stood, at Washington and Essex streets in Boston, is marked by a carved relief of the tree on the Washington Street front of the Liberty Tree Block, the building David Sears erected on the site in 1850. ^[17][1][2]

In 2018, Boston reopened Liberty Tree Plaza at 2 Boylston Street with a new elm tree and a stone monument with an inscription. ^[18] The site lies well off the Freedom Trail. ^[19]

The Old State House museum in Boston, run by Revolutionary Spaces, holds a remnant of the flag that flew above the tree and displays one of the lanterns hung on it to celebrate the Stamp Act’s repeal in 1766. ^[19][2]

Family Lines Referenced

• 🟢 The Coffins of Nantucket → Coffin-Loyalist connection well-documented in multiple published sources. Nathaniel Coffin Sr.’s banishment in 1778 is a matter of record; Nathaniel Coffin Jr.’s role in cutting down the Liberty Tree rests on Coffin family accounts, while Boston histories name Job Williams. ^[6][7][1]
• 🟡 The Green Connection → Green officer connections under research. William Green’s wounding at Bunker Hill and Capt. Francis Green’s Continental service are recorded; descent line under active investigation.

← Service in the Revolution · The Coffins of Nantucket → · The Green Connection → · Battle of Bunker Hill →