Johnny Appleseed

American pioneer and agriculturalist

• Born: September 26, 1774
• Birthplace: Leominster, Massachusetts
• Died: March 18(?), 1845
• Place of death: Allen County, near Fort Wayne, Indiana

A legendary figure in American frontier history, Johnny Appleseed introduced apple trees to the Ohio Valley, where the seeds he planted helped to make apple orchards an important part of midwestern agricultural development.

Early Life

John Chapman, who would become famous as Johnny Appleseed, was the son of Nathaniel and Elizabeth Chapman, modest inhabitants of the Worcester County, Massachusetts, town of Leominster. His mother died when he was two, and his father served in the American Revolution and remarried when he returned home from military service. The father then moved his family to the vicinity of Springfield, Massachusetts. As soon as he was grown, John Chapman yielded to a deep-seated urge to wander, on foot, through the frontier regions of the new republic. He headed first for western Pennsylvania, where he was listed in the 1801 census as a resident of Venango County.

After the conflict with American Indians in the Ohio territory was resolved by the victory of General Anthony Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 and the Greenville Treaty of 1795, settlers began to pour into the area. Chapman was far from the first to settle there, but he had made forays into Ohio—mostly to the valley of the Muskingum River—during the early years of the nineteenth century. By 1809 he had already moved his base to Ohio, where he bought two town lots in the town of Mount Vernon, which was to be his base for the next twenty years.

Life’s Work

Around the beginning of the nineteenth century, Chapman had the notion of gathering apple seeds from the cider presses that were ubiquitous in every frontier community and planting them on uninhabited land along the banks of a stream or a river. Wherever he found a productive plot, he planted apple seeds and created nurseries from which he later offered seedlings to the surrounding settlers. Most of his nurseries were located on the floodplains of the many streams that flowed southward toward the Muskingum River, which, in turn, flowed farther southward until it reached the Ohio River. Chapman’s methodology consisted of locating a suitable planting site during the early spring and planting the seeds that he carried with him in a sack. Before moving on, he would locate a nearby settler and arrange for that individual to keep an eye on his new nursery and to arrange for the subsequent transplantation of seedlings to the clearings of the new settlements.

It has often been objected that because apples do not “grow true” from seed but can only be properly propagated by grafting scions or new twigs from an existing tree onto the “root stock” of a smaller tree, Chapman’s efforts were those of an itinerant rustic. There were, however, both practical and ideological reasons for Chapman’s methodology. According to legend, when someone tried to convince Chapman of the superiority of grafting, he replied, “They can improve the apple in that way but that is only a device of man, and it is wicked to cut up trees that way. The correct method is to select good seeds and plant them in good ground and God only can improve the apples.” For Chapman, then, grafting was artificial, and planting seeds was the natural way to expand orchards.

On the practical level, securing and carrying scions from established orchards on the East Coast over frontier roads posed real problems. Keeping the scions moist and viable over the long periods needed to make the trek was difficult, and they required far more space than seeds. It had, however, been done. In the first years of the nineteenth century, General Rufus Putnam had brought scions from the famous Putnam Orchards of Connecticut and developed a substantial quantity of grafted trees at the mouth of the Muskingum River near Marietta, Ohio. By 1808 the area boasted 774 acres of apple orchards composed largely of grafted trees.

Despite the criticism, there was still practical merit in Chapman’s technique. Most apples in the frontier settlements wound up as cider, and the apples produced by ordinary seedlings were perfectly adequate for this purpose. Cider was drunk in huge quantities by the early settlers. Some of it went on to become hard cider, or apple brandy, which also enjoyed widespread popularity. For such purposes, wild apples—the kind produced by trees grown from seed—were fully adequate, and occasionally the throw of the genetic dice would produce a tree bearing outstanding apples.

The result of Chapman’s efforts was that an apple orchard existed on virtually every new farm created in the Ohio wilderness. The apples were used for cider, dried to make fruit that could last through the winter, or turned into apple butter. Those who had cold cellars could keep some apples fresh through the winter. The part of the crop that wound up as apple brandy was drunk throughout the region, and some even found its way down the Ohio River to New Orleans, Louisiana, where it had commercial value.

After the War of 1812, Chapman became an itinerant peddler of his seedlings, for he had nurseries throughout central Ohio. He had also become a convert to the religious philosophy of Emanuel Swedenborg, who stressed the reality of the spirit as opposed to its bodily incarnation. This philosophy appealed to such a fervent lover of nature as Chapman, and he combined peddling his seedlings with pushing Swedenborg’s ideas. Thanks in large part to his missionary efforts, a number of Swedenborgian communities arose in the area, and Chapman occasionally preached at such gatherings. He distributed tracts at every isolated farmhouse and often discussed the ideas they contained with the inhabitants.

Also after the war, when settlement of Ohio resumed, Chapman began buying land in sizable pieces rather than just the town lots of Mount Vernon. He began leasing school lots for ninety-nine years, with no rent due for the first three, during which the lessee had to clear three acres and build a cabin. The rent that became due, annually, after the first three years was supposed to provide funding for schools. At one time or another, Chapman had leases on at least five parcels of 160 acres each. Although he eventually lost all these leases through failure to pay the annual rent, he did clear the necessary three acres and build a cabin on several, and he planted a nursery on at least one. A major reason that Chapman was unable to retain ownership of the school-lot leases was the depression that hit the country during the early 1820’s. The experience caused him to scale back his acquisitions and occasionally lease a small, one-half-acre plot from a settler in order to plant a nursery on the site.

At the same time, sensing that the frontier had moved westward, Chapman began to explore the section of northwestern Ohio that had previously been reserved for American Indians. In this region, the Maumee River flows northward, while across the border in Indiana the Wabash River flows southward; the watersheds of the two rivers are separated by only a small ridge of land. By 1834 Chapman had again begun to purchase land in large blocks in the Fort Wayne, Indiana, area. In that year he purchased one forty-two-acre plot and one ninety-nine-acre plot. In 1836 he was back at the Fort Wayne Land Office to purchase two more parcels, one of eighteen acres and another of seventy-four. In 1838 he bought forty acres northwest of Fort Wayne. Much of the remainder of his life was spent developing these Indiana holdings with the assistance of his brother-in-law, William Broom, who, with his wife Persis, had followed Chapman first to Ohio and then to Indiana.

Chapman first ventured into Indiana only in the spring and summer. In the fall he would return to Ohio, often staying with his sister and brother-in-law, the Brooms, over the winter. By the late 1830’s, however, he had transferred his activities almost wholly to Indiana, returning only occasionally and briefly to Ohio. It was near Fort Wayne that he died on or near March 18, 1845.

Significance

The legend of Johnny Appleseed began during Chapman’s lifetime but ballooned after his death. A major boost to the legend, hitherto largely an oral tradition, was the publication, in 1871, of an article in Harper’s Magazine. After the article, many people came forward to add anecdotes to the legend. Prior to that time, Chapman had been largely remembered in horticultural circles. T. S. Humerickhouse published an article praising Chapman as a nurseryman in Hovey’s Magazine of Horticulture in 1846. In the same year, Henry Howe, an author of local histories, began producing a history of Ohio’s counties in which Chapman figured. In 1858 the first fictional account of Chapman appeared in James F. McGaw’s novel Philip Seymour. In 1904 a novel entitled The Quest of John Chapman by Newell Dwight Hillis ascribed Chapman’s itinerant lifestyle to blighted love. Johnny Appleseed has also appeared in a number of poems, the most famous of which is Vachel Lindsay’s “In Praise of Johnny Appleseed.”

Various memorials to Johnny Appleseed have been erected over the years. Fort Wayne created a Johnny Appleseed Commission, and its secretary, Robert C. Harris, researched some of the historical details of his life. In 1935 the Optimist Club of Fort Wayne erected a monument at the site where Chapman is believed to have been buried. His career in Ohio is memorialized by monuments in Ashland, Mansfield, and the vicinity of Mifflin. The city of Leominster, whose public librarian, Florence Wheeler, uncovered the details of Chapman’s birth there, set up a monument (later taken down to prevent vandalism) and now has a large sign proclaiming Leominster as the “birthplace of Johnny Appleseed.” Commemorative celebrations have been held in both Fort Wayne and Leominster.

Bibliography

Hensley, Tim. “Apples of Your Eye.” Smithsonian 33, no. 8 (November, 2002): 110. Examines efforts to save America’s apple heritage, surveys the history of apple growing in the United States, and recounts Chapman’s story.

Hurt, Douglas. The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1726-1830. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Hurt, author of other scholarly books on American agriculture, provides a comprehensive account of the early days of settlement in Ohio. The book provides the setting for Chapman’s early nurseries and gives some account of Chapman’s career.

Jones, Robert Leslie. History of Agriculture in Ohio. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1983. Jones places Chapman’s work in the context of agricultural development in Ohio.

Jones, William Ellery, ed. Johnny Appleseed, a Voice in the Wilderness: The Story of Pioneer John Chapman, a Tribute. 7th ed. West Chester, Pa.: Chrysalis Books, 2000. Jones, founder of the Johnny Appleseed Heritage Center in Ohio, edited this collection of essays about Chapman’s life and legend. Includes an essay by Robert Price about Appleseed’s depiction in folklore and literature, and an essay about Chapman’s religion.

Lindsay, Vachel. Johnny Appleseed and Other Poems. New York: Macmillan, 1928. Contains Lindsay’s poetic tribute to Johnny Appleseed.

Price, Robert. Johnny Appleseed: Man and Myth. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1954. Price devoted many years to searching out the historical truth about Johnny Appleseed, and it is reported in this book. Price separates truth from myth and reviews the documentary records of Chapman’s life, notably his numerous land purchases. Indispensable for a historical appreciation of Johnny Appleseed.

Thoreau, Henry David. Wild Apples. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1923. Another lover of the wilderness explains the potential of the wild apple trees that still dot the landscape.