A tree that has seen hundreds of storms was damaged by a windstorm this weekend, Riddick’s Folly House Museum curator Edward King said Monday.

King said he noticed the 15-foot-tall section of the cedar tree lying on the ground Sunday afternoon. He hadn’t noticed it when he arrived that day, so he believes it may have broken Saturday night and fell Sunday.

“I think it’s over 200 years old,” he said. He believes the tree was already there when the house was built, which took place in 1837.

The National Weather Service recorded a gust of 53 miles per hour at the Suffolk Executive Airport about 8:55 p.m. on Saturday. Sustained winds throughout the evening were in the range of 20 to 30 miles per hour.

King said there are documents telling of a cedar-lined lane that led to the Rosehill plantation nearby.

“We’re thinking that could have possibly been one of the trees,” King said.

The Folly was originally the home of Mills Riddick, a wealthy lumber dealer. A large fire in the 1830s destroyed the first building on the site, as well as many others, and Riddick used his insurance settlement to pay for the construction of his new home. Locals dubbed it a “folly” because of its massive size and unusual architecture.

He and his wife, Mary Taylor Riddick, had 10 children who lived to adulthood. When he died in 1844, she moved into a smaller home nearby. The home fell to her children in equal shares, but Nathaniel Riddick purchased his siblings’ shares and moved in with his wife, Missouri. He was a lawyer and used the home for his practice until he built a separate office on the property.

Nathaniel Riddick would go on to serve in the Virginia House of Delegates and as a judge. The Union Army used the house as a headquarters during its occupation of Suffolk during the Civil War, and soldiers’ graffiti still is visible in the home’s upper rooms. Nathaniel Riddick died in 1882.

The home now serves as a memorial to the Riddicks, the Civil War and Suffolk life in the 1800s. It features several permanent and rotating exhibits.

King said he’s sad the tree is damaged, but he plans to ask a local woodworker to make something useful or unique out of the wood.

“It’s a shame — the thing has survived all of the storms it’s seen,” until now, he said.

Call 934-0822 for more information on the Folly.