Tree Root That Ate Roger Williams

It is an odd-looking item that the fifth-graders at the Aldrich House now look at. With puzzlement they ponder thin pieces of wood that resemble tree branches wound together and attached to a box in the shape of a coffin. Roger Williams lived a long and vigorous life, 80 years or so, before he died, sometime between January and March of 1683. As was the custom, he was buried on the land behind his house, though at the time he and Mary were living with their son Daniel. His funeral was modest considering the stature he would achieve in later years. There was a volley of gunfire, a salute to his having been a military officer during King Philip's War.  It would be a century before anyone would take serious action to build a monument to Williams, and then the Revolutionary War thwarted the effort and another century elapsed before another effort was made. 
On March 22, 1860, a Williams descendant, Stephen Randall, and some of his friends dug up the grave said to be Williams's. They found an empty tomb, save for a few nails, perhaps some remnant of bone (depending on whom you believe) and the root of an apple tree. 
Another descendant at the grave site, Zachariah Allen, wrote that the apple tree's main root had pushed "towards the precise spot occupied by Williams' skull.