I’m sure we’ve all heard of Johnny Appleseed and those apple seeds he planted “everywhere.”  The 1948 Disney movie, “Melody Time,” and their 2002 version, “American Legends,” both include a short story about him with a simple upbeat song:  “The Lord is good to me, And so I thank the Lord, For giving me the things I need, The sun and rain and an apple seed, Yes, He’s been good to me…” 

But who was this legendary man?  Not many Americans know the real story behind the myths perpetuated in film, song and verse.  And, since I didn’t know much more about Johnny Appleseed other than the fact that he went around planting apple seeds, I thought it was about time I did a little research.  

John (not Jonathan, his youngest half-brother’s name, as some websites call him) Chapman was born September 26, 1774 in Leominster, Massachusetts.  But, he died far from his birth home, an apparent pauper, near Fort Wayne, Indiana in mid-March 1845.  He may have died the 11^th, or the 18^th, or was it the 17^th?  Accounts vary, rather indicative of his life, but his obituary was dated March 22, 1845 in the “Fort Wayne Sentinel” of Fort Wayne, Ohio. 

John Chapman's Birthplace - Leominster, Massachusetts

He was a simple man, walking virtually everywhere in bare feet, even in inclement weather, wearing baggy pantaloons and a coffee sack from which he’d cut holes for his head and arms.  He often wore one or more hats on his head, including a cooking pot with a handle, and carried his belongings in a satchel on his back. 

Then, one dreary evening when the precipitation coming down was a bitter cold mixture of rain and snow, he appeared at the door of the William Worth home, friends with whom he’d stayed before.  After satisfying his hunger, he shared his usual news “right fresh from heaven” with the family (Means, p.1) –  the truths within the Bible as seen through his eyes and those in the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg as was his favorite past time.  He was a faithful disciple of Swedenborg’s religious philosophy, carrying the church’s books and pamphlets with him and eagerly expounding upon his favorite issues to anyone available to listen, for this was “…in many ways, the driving force of his life.”  (Johnny Appleseed:  The Man, the Myth, the American Story, Howard Means, p.6) 

Chapman apparently awoke the next morning with a fever from an infection which seems to have settled in his lungs.  He died within days, or was it just hours, of what was then called the “winter plague” which could have been anything from pneumonia to influenza.  And, apparently he died with his face the picture of serenity as the Worth family and their physician later pointed out.  (Means, p. 2) 

Chapman was a simple and gentle man, not one given to drunkenness or fighting.  He was very much at home in the wilderness, preferring the untamed wild country to the inside of a cabin.  But, at times he did appreciate the hearth of those who welcomed him inside their home - that is, when he chose to enter.  Interestingly, he was accepted by virtually everyone with whom he came in contact despite his odd and uncouth appearance - from the Native Americans to the domesticated early settlers and the wilderness frontiersmen.  He was respected as an odd eccentric, a larger-than-life character wherever he went.  He had an uncanny ability to be “here one minute, gone the next.”  (Means, p. 3) 

The famed Civil War general, William Tecumseh Sherman, born and raised in Lancaster, Ohio, may have known Chapman, or perhaps just knew of him, as Chapman passed through the area while Sherman was still in his teens.  After Chapman’s death, Sherman is purported to have said, “Johnny Appleseed’s name will never be forgotten… We will keep his memory green, and future generations of boys and girls will love him as we, who knew him, have learned to love him.”  (Means, p. 4) 

Born in 1774 as above, Chapman was the second child of Nathaniel and Elizabeth (Simons) Chapman.  His father was a member of the Minutemen Militia and fought at Bunker Hill.  Both families have ties to the very early New England settlers, with descendants of Chapman’s mother’s extended Simonds/Simons family known to include the George Bush family. 

While Nathaniel Chapman was off fighting the war for independence that summer of 1776, his wife gave birth to their third son, Nathaniel, on June 26.  On July 16, however, Elizabeth succumbed to an illness already affecting her as she had written in a letter to her husband earlier that month.  Barely two weeks after her death, her tiny infant son also died.  There must have been intense heartbreak felt by the two young siblings left behind.  With their father at war, it has been presumed their mother’s family took them in.

With very little documentation of their early childhood, we only know that little Johnny and his older sister, Elizabeth, are next found with their father and step-mother in Longmeadow, south of Springfield, Massachusetts by about 1781.  Into a very small house, about 400 square feet, Nathaniel Sr. moved with his new wife, Lucy.  In time, ten more children joined the family.  The assumption can only be that of a home in utter chaos and squalor as the older children helped to care for the newer infants.  From this noise and chaos, it appears John Chapman escaped with his half-brother, Nathaniel, Jr.

Again, though we know very little of Chapman’s growing up years, he and Nathaniel Jr. are found about 15 years later (about 1796) in far western Pennsylvania.  The western frontier was just beginning to open up with wilderness land ready for settlement by Revolutionary War veterans.  How fortuitous when, in 1792, the Ohio Company of Associates (actually formed in Massachusetts, among other companies with land deals) began to offer one hundred acres of land free to anyone desiring to settle the “Donation Tract.”  This land encompassed about one hundred thousand acres of wilderness beyond Ohio’s first white settlement in Marietta, used to help create a buffer zone between the white settlers and the warring Native Americans.  There was one catch, however, to obtaining this free land:  you had just three years in which to plant 50 apple trees and 20 peach trees as proof of your intention to settle the land.  (Means, p.8-9)

Chapman, with his uncanny ability to know where frontier settlements were likely to spring up, would trek into the wilderness, often along fertile river bottoms, stake out his claim and clear several acres to plant the apple seeds he had obtained from cider mills.  He usually surrounded his plantings with a brush fence, though that did not always keep the small seedlings from being destroyed by critters and river flooding.  In a few years, a small apple orchard would be waiting the arrival of settlers.  However, he did not profit much from property he sold.  Quite often, he simply used up whatever profits he’d made to buy and care for abused horses he saw on his travels.  He also had a habit of just giving away seeds or young trees to those who couldn’t afford to pay much, if anything, for them.  (Means, p.9)

Chapman’s eccentricities abound, promoting a mythical aspect to his life story.  Supposedly, he had been kicked in the head by a horse, perhaps in his twenties, suffering a skull fracture that required he be trepanned – that is, he had a portion of skull bone removed to alleviate pressure on his brain from internal hemorrhaging.  Some have contended there might be validity to this story to explain some of Chapman’s oddities.  Again, even this accident cannot be proven beyond that which W. M. Glines of Marietta, Ohio claimed.  (Means, p.13)

And so, into Pennsylvania, John (23 years) and Nathaniel (about 16) traveled – whether by foot, by horse, or by canoe no one knows for certain. Nor can various authors’ claims of various routes be proven beyond doubt.  Regardless of how they arrived, John and Nathaniel planted apple seeds in the ground which they’d obtained in apple mash at cider mills; their intent was to plant seeds to prove their land throughout the wilderness.

Their first plantings were made in what later became Warren County of northwest Pennsylvania during 1796 to 1799.  Proof of their travels here is recorded in various journals and records at trading posts along the Allegheny River between Warren and Franklin.  At some point before the turn of the new 19^th century, John and his half-brother Nathaniel parted ways for reasons unclear to historians.  John Chapman is recorded in various land deals, buying and leasing, signing promissory notes to family members, and selling land and apple seedlings all through the early part of the 19^th century. 

It should also be noted that, by planting apple seeds, Chapman’s trees would not grow fruit true to the parent apple.  Unless limbs are grafted onto sturdy root stock, apple seeds will revert to growing into one of thousands of varieties from their unique genetic coding, making apple tree propagation by seed totally unreliable.  Among logical explanations for Chapman’s planting of apple seeds for fruit trees have been his desire to quickly establish ownership of the land his seeds were planted upon, knowing that whatever type of apple was produced would simply be pressed into cider.  This beverage was consumed more often as hard cider at a time when liquor, hard cider and wine were used in large quantities by adults and children alike.  Thus, Chapman’s apple trees would be a welcome addition to any homestead on the frontier.  (Means, p.97)

Another important part of Chapman’s mystique was his religious devotion to Swedenborgianism and the so-called New Church founded in 1787 in Britain after Swedenborg’s death.  In fact, after visiting Ohio settlements in1801, Chapman became a convert and devoted disciple, leaving literature for settlers, often announcing himself with the words, “Here is news right fresh from heaven for you.”  (Means, p.121)  Armed with his own philosophy of not harming anything or anyone, plant, animal or human, Chapman was ready to share his religious beliefs with anyone who would listen… an avid missionary, as noted by the New Church.

Briefly, Swedenborgianism was founded by the Swedish scientist and philosopher, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).  In 1768, Swedenborg was tried for heresy.  In 1770, he and his followers were ordered to cease their teachings.  Swedenborg claimed to have psychic gifts, saw visions, and believed he was given special revelations directly from God.  He imputed his own philosophy into the divinely inspired words of Scripture to propagate his own beliefs.  Swedenborg also denied the triune character of God, believed that Christ was born with inherent evil from His mother, denied the personality of Satan, denied that Christ’s death was a substitution or atonement for our sin, and denied that Christ arose from the dead.  (Sanders, p.167)  Thus, he was in opposition to the doctrinal tenets which are the substantive foundational components of the Christian faith.

Moving over into Ohio not long after the turn of the 19^th century, Chapman is found planting his apple seeds from Steubenville and Wellsburg near the eastern border of Pennsylvania to Dexter City north of the Ohio River, Marietta on the Muskingum River to Newark on the Licking River.  He purchased or leased land in several northern counties as well, including Knox, Richland and Ashland.  Later, he also covered ground in Indiana.

Chapman roamed far and wide in wilderness territory, always with an eye for a good place to put his seeds in the ground, having that keen ability to discern where new settlements were most likely to spring up.  In early September 1812, he began to merge into myth during a period of hostile Indian attacks with counter-attacks by the white settlers.  Chapman apparently ran 26 miles each way, in bare feet, from house to house in the middle of the night through the wilderness to yell out a warning to settlers that the Indians were on the warpath.  He, more than anyone else, knew the trails like the backs of his hands from his own meanderings and plantings.  With this singular feat, he alerted settlers of an impending attack by the Indians; though the Indians lay low for a brief period, they eventually overtook the settlers in a deadly surprise attack.

Ohio was then a wilderness fraught with an overabundance of wild animals to be on the lookout for, along with murders and scalpings by Indians in retaliation for various events by the whites as they saw the loss of their territory.  It was also a time of hard, back-breaking physical labor for settlers to get their acreage up to par in order to earn a living from the land.  In this lifestyle, men and women both lived, on average, only to about age 35, though occasionally much longer.  In this wilderness, Chapman lived as a modern, unkempt “John the Baptist.”  He was dressed in assorted rags, with long and scraggly hair and beard, with not exactly a pleasant aroma about him, and with dark eyes that seemed to sparkle and glow in the excitement or passion of his conversations.  In the wild, he typically ate “honey, berries, fruit, some cornmeal for mush, [and] milk whenever it was available.”  (Means, p.168) 

He was seen to walk barefoot in snow and on ice; he stuck pins and needles into his feet without flinching.  In fact, the mid-19^th century poet, novelist, and Ohio native, Rosella Rice, wrote that neither she nor her childhood friends made “fun of the man [or had] sport at his expense… No matter how oddly he was dressed or how funny he looked, we children never laughed at him, because our parents all loved and revered him as a good old man, a friend, and a benefactor.”  (Means, pp. 176-177)

In 1805, Chapman’s father and step-mother moved with several of their younger children from Longmeadow, Massachusetts to Duck Creek on the Muskingum River near Marietta, Ohio.  If they had hoped for it, the welcome mat was not put out by their “long lost” son.  Chapman’s father died only two years after arriving, but there had not been the usual happy family visits one would have expected between father and son.  Instead, Chapman appears to have continued to keep his distance from his family except on rare occasions.  Many thoughts fuel the speculation as to why, including the fact he had signed two promissory notes to family members without any documentation as to whether he paid his debt off or not.  Perhaps he and his step-family did not get along.  No one knows for sure why he kept his distance from them.  Let it be said, however, that being with his family wasn’t anathema to him; rather, his on-the-move personality simply didn’t fit to make him into someone he was not, as in someone who would stay on the homestead, tending to the fields, animals and family. 

In his later life, Chapman’s work of planting both apple seeds and the New Church’s “fresh news” was considered to be that of an “extraordinary missionary…” by the Swedenborg church hierarchy.  “Having no family, and inured to hardships of every kind, his operations are unceasing.  He is now employed in traversing the district between Detroit and the closer settlements of Ohio…”  (Means, p.192)  In an 1821 letter regarding Chapman’s desire to trade land for religious books of the faith, something the church could not do, a Daniel Thunn called him “the Appleseed man…”  A Reverend Holly wrote in a letter dated November 18, 1822 that Chapman was a man in Ohio “…they call…John Appleseed out there…”  This is considered the first written record of the name given to an eccentric man who gradually evolved into the myth we call Johnny Appleseed.  (Means, pp.192-193)

As elusive and eccentric as he was in his lifetime, so he was in death.  While the actual circumstances and date surrounding his death are somewhat sketchy, it comes as no surprise that his actual burial plot is also now unknown.  Several witnesses stepped forward and claimed they knew where he was buried, including a self-proclaimed grandson of his half-brother Andrew - until it was determined John Chapman did not have a half-brother by that name.  Not until 1916 did the Indiana Horticultural Society chose an area at the top of a grassy knoll to forever be known as Chapman’s burial site.  Here, in Fort Wayne, an iron fence was erected with a plaque that reads as simple as the man was:

John Chapman

Johnny Appleseed

Died 1845

 Near Dexter City, Ohio is another monument.  It stands seven feet tall, and is built with stones brought from every state in the nation.  This plaque reads:

“In Memory of John Chapman,

Famous ‘Johnny Appleseed…’

Without a Hope of Recompense,

Without a Thought of Pride,

John Chapman Planted Apple Trees,

And Preached, and Lived, and Died.”

(Means, p.227)

After his death, his estate was appraised with salable assets including one gray mare, 2000 apple trees in Jay County, 15,000 apple trees in Allen County, and multiple parcels of land.  With the sale of all he had to show for his life, Chapman’s estate was valued at $409 (about $9,300 in 2011), not exactly pittance.  However, every cent of it was eaten up by back taxes along with other unpaid bills owed to family and friends.  Rather symbolic of how Chapman lived his life… with little true income or money in his pocket, living off the land and largesse of friends and strangers, nothing ostentatious about him.

It is also interesting to note that Howard Means (author of Johnny Appleseed:  The Man, the Myth, the American Story) was able to trace several plots of land on which Chapman had established orchards, but which have now become part and parcel of very modern cities, minus the orchards, of course.

Many stories of Chapman/Appleseed have been proven false by Means’ extensive research as he ferreted out the details behind the stories.  Various contemporaneous writings have also set forth romanticized versions of Chapman’s life which were then carried on into the 20^th century, perpetuating the myths about the man.

In attempting to explain an element of Chapman’s eccentricity, Means recalled that he had once worked with a psychiatric response team in Washington, D.C.  Here, he found legally insane people often dressed in odd rags and tattered clothing and who smelled terrible – as eyewitnesses claimed of Chapman.  Means found it interesting that the eyes of many seemed to glow as they talked, just as it was said Chapman’s did.  These people clearly heard voices in their heads, often with acting-out behavior in response to the voices.  Chapman also told his listeners he was given revelations directly from God.  Means feels that Chapman meets the modern definition of insanity and shared “the old adage [that] if you talk to God, it’s prayer.  If God talks to you, it’s schizophrenia.”  (Means, p.274)   Whether Chapman/Appleseed was schizophrenic or otherwise insane is not mine to determine, but merely to pass along as explanation.

This was not the direction I expected Johnny Appleseed’s story to take.  However we look at the life of Johnny Appleseed (aka John Chapman), he was a man who respected everyone he met, who harmed no one, not even a mosquito (putting out at least one fire rather than cause the death of more insects, per one eyewitness).  He was an eccentric man who has loomed larger than life, yet a man about whom we have known very little… with often that little bit being erroneous.

Among other authors who have worked at fleshing out the myths and stories behind the elusive Chapman/Appleseed, Means has done a remarkable job to give us the clearest picture possible of John Chapman’s life.  While pointing out what is merely conjecture versus documented fact, to prove or disprove various and sundry reports, the colored stories and facts of Chapman’s life come alive.  And therein we discover the enigma of one for whom truth has evolved into romanticized myths regarding a simple man we’ve all admired… Johnny Appleseed.