Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
May 8, 1817
Primary Source Reference:
Peale Museum Accessions Book, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, p. 84
Additional Source Text:
"Under the shade of which, Christopher Columbus first caused the Christian God to be publicly invoked in the New World. It is in the Island of Cuba, and a Lamp has been kept constantly burning under it for the last two hundred Years. The Tree is yet in vigor."
Notes:
Near the Plaza da Armas in Havana is the site where Columbus is said to have held the first mass in 1519. The present-day ceiba tree was planted on May 19, 1960.
Garrett Elliott Pendergrast (1776-1850) received a medical degree in 1803 from the University of Pennsylvania. He had been a surgeon in the Orleans Territory militia beginning in 1807. Appointed hospital surgeon in the U.S. Army in 1812, Pendergrast was serving under William Henry Harrison in 1813 when he received permission to travel to Philadelphia on private business. He resigned his commission in 1814. Prendergrast was the author of A Physical and Topographical Sketch of the Mississippi Territory, Lower Louisiana, and a Part of West Florida (Philadelphia, 1803).
