From Matthies's book: "This oak has always been called a tree of the primeval forest. The house under it was built by Samuel Hayden in 1737 and has been lived in by successive generations of Haydens from that day to this. Sergeant Samuel Hayden kept a tavern in this house under the oak in Oliver Ellsworth's young manhood. Tradition says that he often went up there to crack jokes with his fellow men and to eat apple pie. The tavern was less than a mile from the Ellsworth Homestead and on the direct road, in those days, to the settlements north of Windsor. This part of is called Haydens. It is recorded that in 1886 the oak measured four feet in diameter with a spread of branches of nearly ninety feet."