Struck down

By Allison Brophy Champion

Published: June 21, 2008

Powerful thunderstorms raged through Culpeper the night of June 7, plunging the entire town into darkness.

A few miles north of town the force of nature felled a mighty oak tree said to have been standing for at least 300 years.

The tree stood — at least 60-feet-tall — in Rebecca Schwier’s side yard for all those centuries and her family and neighbors had certainly come to enjoy its shade and natural beauty.

Now, the tree’s branches lay scattered in the yard, its massive trunk torn asunder.

And there’s wood — lots of wood — that she’s offering to give away to anyone who’s willing to come get it.

Schwier said she never heard such a noise as the one leading to the tree’s destruction.

“It got struck by lightning right in the center,” she said. “It is all black and you could just smell the burning.”

A “terrible wind” preceded the dramatic lightning strike, Schwier said, “that shook our whole house from both sides.”

“It was very short, but very terrible, reminded me of a tornado,” she said.

A few days earlier, in fact, the National Weather Service confirmed tornadoes touched down in Culpeper during the first June blackout on the fourth.

“At the end, there was a loud clap of thunder and flash of lightning that sounded like it was in the house with us,” said Schwier, a fourth grade teacher at H.M. Pearson Elementary School in Catlett, of her home near Alanthus.

In an instant, the old oak tree was split. If trees had eyes, just imagine what that one would have seen.

Three hundred years ago, there was no Culpeper County.

However, in 1714, a band of German immigrants established the first European settlement near Culpeper, not far from the union of the Rapidan and Rappahannock rivers in an area that came to be known as Germanna.

Of course, various tribes of Native Americans lived off the land and water in what today is Culpeper for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived.

Perhaps early settlers or native traders passed the old tree, just a sapling then, in their travels through what was likely a heavily wooded area back then.

A few years ago, Schwier said, a local arborist dated the tree and he attested it was at least 300 years old, predating the U.S.
But now that the damage has been done, she’s trying to get rid of the wood.

“We will have to cut it down and clean it up and it’s going to cost a ton of money to haul away,” Schwier said.

“Maybe somebody would step forward and say hey, I can do something with antique wood.”

The family hasn’t yet started removing the tree and doesn’t own a chainsaw.

Want a piece of history? E-mail Schwier at .

Allison Brophy Champion can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 101 or

Need wood?
The Schwier family of northern Culpeper has lots of old wood to give away following the felling of their old oak in the June 7 thunderstorm. E-mail Rebecca Schwier at for directions to the house.