In front of Samford Hall on the campus of Samford University is an oak tree with a bronze plaque.

This tree was planted here after spring 2005, perhaps as late as 2007. In 1996, as the original Sherman Oak was ailing from lightening strikes and old age (it was about 200 years old). Acorns were gathered from the tree and nurtured into seedlings that were distributed to alumni at homecoming in fall 1997 (Seasons: The Magazine of Samford University, fall 1997, p. 10). I’m told one of these seedlings was planted on Samford’s campus Talbird Circle and that a few years later it was realized that this was not the right location for a large tree. So after a large tree planted in the 1960s had been removed from in front of Samford Hall, this Sherman Oak was moved from Talbird Circle to its current location in front of Samford Hall.

I note this history because a 2015 press release from Samford eroneously stated that this tree had been planted when the campus was developed in the late 1950s. That is clearly not the case. The press release also stated that many offspring of the Sherman Oak had been planted at that time. I’ve seen no other records of that. The one Samford-coordinated effort to develop a new generation of Sherman Oaks was the 1997 distribution of seedlings at Homecoming. While many oak trees were planted on campus in the late 1950s and early 1960s most of them were not Southern red oaks and they were not offspring of Sherman Oak in East Lake.

For pictures of the old tree see Samford’s Digital Collections.