Johnny Appleseed A Pioneer and a Legend 1774 – …

1 Johnny AppleseedA Pioneer and a Legend1774 1845 Yes, Johnny Appleseed was a real live person. His name wasJohn Chapman. He was born in Leominster, Massachusetts,September 26, 1774. His father was one of the Minutemen atConcord and later served as a Captain in the of his boyhood are scanty at best. His mother diedwhile his father was still in service. His father married againafter the war and the family moved to East Longmeadowwhere he spent his boyhood his early twenties, John Chapman migrated to WesternPennsylvania and first settled in the frontier village of Warren,near Pittsburgh. From there he traveled west into the OhioValley country and in the nearly fifty years that followed helived the life that many folks to this day relate more to legendthan Chapman never married.

2 For want of a more aptdescription of his work, he was an itinerate missionary andpreacher of the Swedenborgian Christian faith and an appletree nurseryman. He became known for his courage anddedication to his fellowman as well as for the thousands ofapple trees he planted. He was a Pioneer , asgreat as the greatest of day early in the spring of 1801 as IsaacStedden worked in the clearing near hiscabin in Licking County, Ohio, he saw astrange-looking traveler approaching onhorseback. Travelers were rare in thosedays, and, despite the odd appearance andmanners of this man, Stedden offered himthe scant courtesies of his cabin. Heremained only a few days and had little tosay of himself or his destination, but whilehe tarried as a guest he talked chiefly ofplanting apple trees so that the settlersmight have fruit in addition to the wild meatand fish found in the forests and took from his saddlebags a quantity ofapple seeds and planted them about the cabin and thendeparted.

3 This was one of the first recorded evidences of JohnChapman s arrival in the Ohio Valley country. He was ayoung man in his early twenties at the years later another settler, who had cleared away theforest and built a cabin on the banks of the Ohio River, a littleabove what is now Steubenville, Ohio, saw a strange craftcoming down the river. It consisted of two canoes lashedtogether. A lone man was the crew . He was oddly andsomewhat raggedly dressed, barefoot, and he wore for a headcovering, or hat, a tin pan. This, it was found afterwards,served the dual purpose of hat and stew pan in which hecooked his food - often just cornmeal mush and informed the settler that his name was John Chapman andthat the cargo in his canoes consisted of bags of apple seed,which he had gathered from the cider presses in WesternPennsylvania, and that he intended to plant them and growapple trees for the settlers.

4 Following the streams and their tributaries he stopped andplanted apple seeds wherever he found suitable ground for anursery. Sometimes the settlers loaned him land plots for hisapple tree nurseries. Sometimes he rented the land. He alsopurchased a number of plots, and owned quite a few acres ofland at the time of his death. Usually the leases and purchaseswere paid in apple trees. He enclosed his nursery plots withfences made of brush. Each year he returned to care for thegrowing trees and to plant new nurseries. When settlers camehe urged them to plant trees and advised them as to whatvarieties to plant. It is said that his favorite apple was theRambo.

5 A substantial proof of this is disclosed by the fact thatthis particular apple was afterwards found on nearly everyfarm in the region traversed by this Pioneer kept ahead of the settlements and each year planted appletrees farther west. In this way he covered much of what is nowOhio and far into Indiana. For nearly fiftyyears he kept steadily at his work and,doubtless, there is no region in the UnitedStates where the early settlers planted morefruit trees than were grown in JohnnyAppleseed s territory. There are still a few oldapple trees alive, which are claimed to havebeen taken from nurseries planted by JohnnyAppleseed. The good that men do livesafter them.

6 No single biography of Johnny Appleseed isreally complete. Over the years, bits andpieces of his life story have been pulledtogether by many authors. Probably one ofthe better and more complete accounts ofJohn Chapman and his work is found in theHistoric Annals of Ohio, published by theOhio Historical Society in 1861. Robert Price s JohnnyAppleseed Man and Myth published in 1967 is an excellentmore recent biography. Little is known of his early life exceptthat he loved nature and that he was markedly unselfish. Hishalf-sister, who survived him, related many beautiful stories ofhis boyhood days. He loved the undisturbed forest. The sightof flowers on the open prairie was a feast to him.

7 He lookedupon all of nature as his friend. He was never known to injureor to kill any living thing except one rattlesnake, and that it issaid he always he came to western Pennsylvania and to the frontier, hismission in life seemed to be to plant apple trees and teach theSwedenborgian religion. His frequent visits to the settlementswere looked forward to with delight and no cabin door wasever closed to him. To the men and women he was newscarrier and oracle. To the children he was friend andplayfellow. He taught the boys to make sleds and wagons. Tothe little girls he brought bits of ribbon and bright calico. Heappreciated the loneliness of Pioneer life and made it brighterwherever he could.

8 He always carried a leather bag filled withapple seeds and was constantly planting them in open placesin the forests, along the roadways, and by the streams. Hebecame known as the apple seed man , and later his realname, John Chapman, was the only name by which he wasknown. The man became a Legend almost before he Appleseed is described as a man of medium height,blue eyes, long, light-brown hair, slender figure, wiry andalert. He wore but little clothing and that, for the most part,was obtained by trading apple trees to the settlers for cast-offgarments. Often, while traveling through the forest his onlygarment was a coffee sack with holes cut in it for his head andarms.

9 He said clothes should not be worn for adornment only for comfort. He went barefoot most of the time, even inwinter. Reports indicate that he was a vegetarian, eating nomeat or fish. He believed it was wrong to take life in order toprocure food. This likely contributed to his zeal for urgingpeople to plant and grow rarely sought shelter in a house, and when he did so wouldusually sleep on the floor before the fireplace with his kit for apillow. Except in very bad weather he preferredto sleep in the open forest or out of doors in theshelter of a shed or other weather latter part of his life he lived with a relativenear what is now Mansfield, Ohio. It was whilehe lived there that the war of 1812 was fought,and some of the active scenes of the war occurrednear his home.

10 One incident is related thatillustrates well his self-sacrifice and his devotionto friends. Late one evening, word came to thefew settlers who had taken their families to theBlock House for refuge that the Indians wereadvancing upon them, that Wallace Reed andLevi Jones, nearby settlers, had been killed. Excitement ranhigh. The settlers in the Block House were unarmed and thenearest body of troops was at Camp Douglas, some thirtymiles away. A consultation was held and it was decided tosend a messenger to this camp to ask for assistance; but whowould go? Volunteers were asked for. A meek, bareheaded,barefoot man, unarmed, but with a countenance full ofdetermination and devoid of fear, stepped forward and said, I ll go.