One of the first fruit trees planted in America - a pear tree - is still going strong at 383 years old.

Among the first wave of immigrants to the New World was an English Puritan named John Endicott, who in 1629, arrived to serve as the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Charged with the task of establishing a welcoming setting for new arrivals upon the untamed land, the Pilgrim leader set about making the area around modern-day Salem as homey as possible.

In approximately 1630, as his children watched on, Endicott planted one of the first fruit trees to be cultivated in America: a pear sapling imported from across the Atlantic. He is said to have declared at the time: "I hope the tree will love the soil of the old world and no doubt when we have gone the tree will still be alive."

The tree did outlive all witnesses to its planting -- as well as generations and generations that followed.

For Arbor Day in 1890, poet Lucy Larcom composed about the old tree so long rooted in American history:

Such a wonder you may see;
For the patriarchal tree
Blossoms still, -- the living thought
Of good Governor Endicott.
Fruit again this year to bear;
Honor to that brave old pear!