Johnny Appleseed

John Chapman, a small man with amazing endurance; known as "Johnny Appleseed." He was really an American pioneer, A Kind and Gentle Hero, the best in Humans and a uniquely American legend.

Johnny Appleseed carried a bag of apple seeds, a spade, his cooking pot on his head, a coffee sack for a coat and a Bible as traveled barefoot westward, planting apple seeds as he went on his sacred quest.

folks still remember little Johnny and sing his song: "Some day they'll be apples there for everyone in the world to share. The Lord is good to me."
"The Lord is good to me...And so I thank the Lord...For giving me the things I need...The sun and rain and the appleseed...The Lord is good to me."

God was good to him, He met many pioneers, read the stories to children and adults and give apple seeds to the settlers. He showed people how to make apples into juice, pies, sauce, butter and Brown Betty. He believed that God wanted him to go around and read his Bible to people and plant apple trees for them.

Johnny Appleseed's gentleness and courage were legendary even in his own time he was a peaceful man He walked alone in the wilderness, without gun or knife or any weapons. He chopped down no trees, and killed no animals.

He was friends with the Indians and the animals, had a wolf companion. He slept outdoors, walked barefoot and ate berries and such, made drinking water in winter by melting snow with his feet. The Indians found him nearly dead in the snow one time and they nursed him back to health.

Johnny spread religion as well as apples. Watching apples grow inspired Johnny to love nature and all the animals in it. Folks say he could talk to the animals.

Johnny Appleseed left home and headed west to the Allegheny Mountains, cleared land to plant apple orchards. Johnny kept moving westward. In each community he planted apple orchards. In his travels, Johnny would stop at a farm and work for only his meals and a place to sleep and always leave some apple seeds for the farmer to plant.

Then one day while he was resting under an apple tree, he heard a voice, "You have one long last trip to take."
Johnny protested that he couldn't go, he had crops to harvest, seeds to sow but the voice continued, " Your work here on earth is done; but, Johnny, up in heaven we need you. You may think we have all we please -- but we don't, we're kinda short on apple trees, we need you there."

Johnny Appleseed was really an American pioneer.

John Chapman, 1774-1845, more familiarly known by the name 
"Johnny Appleseed", born in Massachusetts, died near Fort 
Wayne, Indiana in 1845. He was 71 years old, between those 
two events was a man made of the stuff of legends.

Johnny Appleseed was born in Leominster, Massachusetts on 
September 26, 1774, in the midst of apple trees surrounding 
his home. Apple trees had been brought to America from 
England in the 1600's.

Johnny Appleseed's mother, Elizabeth Symond Chapman, had 
three children: Elizabeth, who was born in 1770, John, and 
Nathaniel Jr., who died shortly after birth in 1776. John's 
mother, who was sick from tuberculosis, died just three 
weeks after her third child.

Johnny Appleseed's father, Nathaniel Chapman, was one of the 
Minutemen who fought at Concord on April 19, 1775, and later 
in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

His father married again when Johnny was 6 to his second 
wife, Lucy Cooley of Longmeadow, Massachusetts, in 1780. 
With their family of ten children, Nathaniel and Lucy lived 
in Longmeadow for many years.

Johnny Appleseed left home about 1797 and headed west to the 
Allegheny Mountains, cleared land to plant apple orchards. 
Johnny Appleseed was a practical nurseryman. Johnny 
Appleseed used seeds which he bought from cider mills in 
Pennsylvania.

The law, in order to assure stability of the newly 
established homesteads, required each settler to plant fifty 
apple trees the first year and Johnny realized that there 
was a real need and an opportunity for service in supplying 
seeds and seedlings.

He was sometimes paid and sometimes his pay would be in the 
form of second-hand clothing or a sack of cornmeal. He was a 
patron of the poor. Johnny gave what little money he amassed 
to the hungry and needy Americans wherever and whenever he 
met them.

Johnny Appleseed moved ahead of the pioneers, starting many 
nurseries throughout the Midwest. Because of bad 
transportation, apples were a practical necessity in the 
early settlers diets.

Johnny Appleseed, owned many tracts of land throughout Ohio 
and Indiana which he used to plant apple seeds, transplant 
seedlings and create orchards. He sold and gave trees to the 
pioneer settlers.

Johnny kept moving westward. In each community he planted 
apple orchards. In his travels, Johnny would stop at a farm 
and work for only his meals and a place to sleep and always 
leave some apple seeds for the farmer to plant.

Johnny Appleseed was religious and became a self-appointed 
missionary for the Church of the New Jerusalem, a Christian 
Church based on the ideas of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish 
theologian.

Johnny shared his religious ideas and Bible with the 
settlers who listened to him. His love for his neighbor made 
him a natural peacemaker between the Indians and the 
settlers.

His path through the East and Midwest has many monuments to 
the memory of Johnny Appleseed which in Biblical terms: "To Do 
Justly, To Love Mercy and To Walk Humbly With His God."

Many legends grew about Johnny and he became a folk hero 
after he died.

One true one, in the War of 1812 he traveled 30 mi to summon 
American troops to Mansfield, Ohio, thereby forestalling a 
raid by Native Americans who were allied with the British.

Legend has it that Johnny Appleseed began his nomadic life 
after a strange and wonderful dream, in which he had a 
vision of a world filled with apple trees in bloom, then set 
out to make that dream come true. Johnny Appleseed dreamed 
of a land covered with blossoming apple trees; of a land 
where no one went hungry because apples were plentiful. 
Johnny's love of apple trees was part of his love of God.

It never hindered little John -- 
he just kept walking, walking on -- 
over the mountain 
over the plain 
through the sunshine 
through the rain 
through forest trails 
knee-deep in mire 
to find a spot of open ground 
where he could plant his apple trees.

Johnny Appleseed died of pneumonia, in the home of his 
friend William Worth, Just short of his seventy-fifth 
birthday, Johnny Appleseed died on March 18, 1845 in Fort 
Wayne, Indiana after more than 50 years of travel. He was 
buried at Fort Wayne, Indiana. He lies buried there under 
the epitaph "He lived for others."

Now there is a "Johnny Appleseed Festival" in Fort Wayne, 
Indiana, the last weekend in September.

He was not only legendary for his "American as Apple Pie" 
orchards, Apples are members of the rose family; many fruits 
are. They are regarded as symbols of American ideals and 
virtues.

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