Trees have stories to tell. They live longer than humans can hope to live. They are silent, unthreatening witnesses to war and peace, planting and harvesting, crime and justice, winter and summer, bitter blood and virtuous living.

But the stories remain hidden until the trees come down. So it was with a loblolly pine tree on the Pretlow farm off Milners Road in the late 1950s.

Joshua Pretlow Sr. bought the 150-acre farm in 1957 and proceeded to harvest the timber the following year. But as pine logs made their way through the lumber mill, a worker noticed one particularly large log with a huge amount of heart.

“You just don’t find heart pine,” said Joshua “Pret” Pretlow Jr. “So he knew it was an old tree.”

They cut a couple of slices and began to delve into the stories this tree had to tell.

His father, Joshua Pretlow Sr., an attorney who had studied agricultural engineering at Virginia Tech and ran a local sawmill during World War II, counted the tree’s rings with a compass point and magnifying glass and came to the conclusion it sprouted in 1703, making it 255 years old when it was cut down.

“If it was still alive, it would be over 300 years old,” Pret Pretlow said.

When the tree was about 12 to 15 years old, all of the timber was cut down around it, Pretlow said. That can be seen in the tree’s rings, because they get wider around that time and stay that way for several decades. The tree had more room to grow.

Several dark spots among the rings show potential lightning strikes, which more than likely ripped a strip of bark off of the tree all the way down and caused a mini-explosion in the ground.

The rings near the outside of the tree are so narrow they almost run together, meaning the tree was becoming aged and crowded in its later years. A couple of holes stand out, but one of them has been covered with a plaque telling the history of the tree.

The Pretlows have marked dates of significance on the tree, including the Declaration of Independence, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I and World War II.

The tree slice now hangs near the receptionist’s desk in the lobby of Pretlow’s law office, the former post office building on North Main Street.

“It’s amazing how many people will walk back and look at it,” Pretlow said.

Perhaps they’re not only looking, but also hearing the stories it tells. ←