A massive 125-year-old elm tree toppled Sunday afternoon, missing by only a few feet one of Newton's historic mansions.

    The 50-to-60-foot tree fell in the 300 block of South College Avenue during an area wind storm that took down several trees, scattered branches and led to a power outage in the city.

    The falling tree grazed a magnolia in the yard of the 1883 Self-Trott-Bickett house, a large brick residence occupied by several prominent early Newton families.

    The current owner, Darwin Samples, said the elm struck a car, breaking out its rear window in a neighbor's driveway.

    Samples said he noticed the tree — probably planted with a row of elms in front of the house when it was built — rocking when he drove away on an errand during the period of strong wind.  When he returned at about 3 p.m., it had fallen.

    Erected by a local manufacturing tycoon William Riley Self of bricks fired in his own kiln, the house near the tumbled tree has a romantic history.  Economic woes foreced Self to sell it after only a year and it then had several owners, including widowed Mrs. Sallie Trott, who ran the large structure as a boarding house, according to "Catawba County: An Architectural History," published in 1991 by the Catawba County Historical Association.

    One owner of the house near the Catawba College campus was Lawrence C. Bickett, a local businessman who was the brother of North Carolina's Word War I governor, Thomas Bickett, a frequent guest at the home.  After it was foreclosed in 1921 when Bickett, too, encountered financial troubles, it was acquired by Floyd E. "Bud" Yount, who had married Annie Self, daughter of the 19th century building of the house.  The house at 331 South College continues to have family ties; Samples' son, Steve Samples, is the great-grandson of Mr. and Mrs. F.E. Yount.