0:00

Welcome to Stuff you missed in History

0:02

Class from how Stuff Works dot com.

0:15

Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I

0:17

am Tracy be Wilson and I'm Holly Frying.

0:20

I am extremely excited about who

0:22

we're talking about today. Me too. It's

0:25

one of those people who is a figure in American

0:27

history that some people may believe

0:30

incorrectly to be mythical, but

0:33

was in fact real, and that is Johnny

0:35

Appleseed. Yeah, we learned about him as elementary

0:37

school kids, but we really only get a very

0:39

weird, brief sliver of the reality

0:42

of his life. Yes, it's a slipper that almost makes

0:44

him a caricature of himself. People

0:47

imagine if you say Johnny Appleseed,

0:49

whether people think he's real or make believe,

0:52

probably going to imagine a guy

0:54

walking around in rags or skins,

0:56

barefooted, with a sack full of apple

0:58

seeds, sleep, being out under the stars

1:01

and planning his apple trees and then moving on. Well,

1:04

I've seen the cartoons. That's how it is basically

1:06

accurate. At

1:08

the same time, there's a whole, much broader

1:11

element of his life that had nothing

1:13

to do uh. Some people think of him

1:15

as the first sort of one of the first conservationists.

1:19

It's really possible to also look

1:21

at him as a very failed capitalist,

1:24

and we're going to talk about that today. It's

1:26

interesting because he's one of those that we don't really

1:28

know a whole lot about his early life. No, we do know

1:30

that he was born on September seventy

1:34

four in Leminster, Massachusetts, and

1:36

his parents were Elizabeth Simon's Chapman

1:39

and Nathaniel Chapman. And though

1:41

he had an older sister named Elizabeth, he

1:44

also had other siblings. Eventually, um

1:47

he had a younger brother named Nathaniel, and his mother

1:50

died just a few weeks after

1:52

Nathaniel was born, and

1:54

then the younger Nathaniel

1:56

sadly also died

1:59

just after that. And that was when Johnny

2:01

was He wasn't quite too just a

2:04

toddler. Yes, it was pretty unclear exactly

2:06

where Elizabeth and john

2:09

went at that point. Uh, their

2:11

father was serving as one of the minutemen.

2:13

He fought at Bunker Hill and

2:15

he was not home until so

2:19

they were living with someone, presumably,

2:21

but we don't know who. It's clear that there were relatives

2:23

in that part of New England. If you look back

2:25

far enough into New England history, pretty much

2:27

everyone is related to everyone at some point,

2:30

so they had plenty of relatives in the area where

2:32

they lived. We're just not sure who

2:35

wound up taking care of them. Until one

2:38

when dad came home, uh

2:41

from from the service. He

2:43

was released, along with several other officers,

2:46

with the description of unsatisfactory

2:49

management of the military stores. Uh.

2:52

He went home without getting a

2:54

pension or land, which was often a

2:56

thing when you were When you got out of the service, you would

2:58

get a pension or end that was

3:00

sort of your payment. Um.

3:03

He gotten either of those, but he did get

3:05

a year's pay. So some people have looked

3:07

at this as kind of evidence that

3:10

that his dad was kind of shiftless, right. But

3:13

at the same time, the armory itself had outlived

3:15

its usefulness a little bit, so it may have been more

3:17

like a layoff than a firing for

3:20

truly bad behavior. Yeah. I think always

3:22

here unsatisfactory management. We think there

3:24

must have been something dicey going on, but

3:26

it really could have just been part of things

3:29

kind of shutting down naturally as right. Um,

3:32

But Nathaniel did remarry. Uh.

3:35

He married Lisa Cooley and then

3:37

the family lived in Long Meadow, which is

3:39

south of Springfield, Massachusetts, and

3:42

it grew and grew, it grew so much, which

3:44

is a little bit unfortunate because Nathaniel

3:47

was not the greatest with things

3:49

like money or farming. But

3:52

Lisa was very

3:55

often pregnant, and she gave birth to ten

3:57

more children between see and

3:59

eighteen o three. So that's ten

4:01

children in twenty one and a half years. That

4:04

is not, in itself a surprising

4:06

number of children for the era. What

4:09

is a little more surprising is that they all seemed

4:11

to have survived until adulthood. And they

4:13

were sharing a four hundred square foot house with

4:15

an attict for sleeping in. That's tight. It's

4:17

not a lot of room, uh,

4:20

And so there at

4:23

some point, most likely because

4:25

of a combination of a lot

4:27

of people in a little space and

4:29

the alluring prospect of

4:32

land that you could get for cheap out west,

4:35

and probably not a lot of money around the

4:37

house, John and his younger brother Nathaniel,

4:39

who was eleven or fifteen at the time,

4:42

left. The dates are little n

4:44

clear. It was either seventeen or seventeen

4:46

ninety six, depending on the accounts.

4:48

Very there's a lot of the accounts vary

4:51

in this story, so John

4:53

was either eighteen or twenty two. His half brother

4:55

Nathaniel was either eleven or fifteen. They left

4:57

Massachusetts together and trave

5:00

old to western Pennsylvania at

5:02

some point in that era. Also, uh,

5:05

there is a story. It's

5:07

hard to substantiate a lot of this because medical

5:09

records were not very clear at the time,

5:12

but there's a story that John was kicked

5:14

in the head by a horse at age twenty one,

5:17

and that the injury was severe enough that he had to

5:19

have part of his skull removed to relieve

5:21

the pressure, which is a valid

5:23

treatment for that kind of injury, but

5:25

still at the time, that's pretty primitive medical

5:29

time. I'm I'm making the scrunched

5:31

up chills in my spine face. But right

5:34

there there are people who attribute

5:37

his later eccentricities to having had this injury.

5:40

That makes sense, but since it's

5:42

not well documented, we can't

5:44

know for sure. Together

5:47

they left, I kind of imagine John

5:49

kind of going and it's too crowded in here. We

5:52

have no money. Let we we can

5:55

get some land if we go west, So let's

5:57

do that. Yeah, And it

5:59

was you know, up just beyond the Ohio

6:01

River was the frontier, and many

6:03

people were making near land grabs. They

6:05

knew that there was potential property to be hand,

6:08

but it was very dangerous. Animals,

6:10

snakes, other people, a

6:12

lots other people of every sort. Uh.

6:15

They're sort of a perception that the other people

6:17

threat was Native Americans

6:20

who were justifiably h

6:22

defending their land, but also everyone,

6:25

yeah, other settlers that were trying to make their

6:27

own way and trying to protect

6:30

what they perceived as their opportunities. Uh.

6:33

And so there was also a lot of illness and injury,

6:35

presumably some of them from interactions

6:38

with other people. And there wasn't really

6:40

much in the way of medical care. In addition

6:42

to the fact that the medical care at the time was

6:45

was often not sound from a

6:48

scientific perspective. There just weren't a lot

6:50

of doctors on the frontier. There were a few

6:52

people who had actual medical training. So

6:54

if you got stick or hurt on the frontier, you

6:57

might die of something that in a

6:59

city would have been more pop uh.

7:03

And they so people and the government

7:05

were buy or trade land from

7:07

the Native Americans and then turn around and

7:09

sell it for a huge profit or divide it up

7:11

like it was the original flipping model. Uh.

7:15

And sometimes Congress would grant businesses

7:17

the rights to divide up and dole out the land

7:19

for money or in exchange for

7:21

residency and improvement requirements, so

7:24

things like orchards developing

7:26

orchards uh and that you

7:29

know was intended to keep people from flipping

7:31

from just reselling their stuff really quickly,

7:33

like they actually wanted development and progress

7:36

and not just money turnovers.

7:40

Yes, apples themselves were important

7:43

at the time. We think of apples today is

7:45

what we eat in pies and

7:47

and just eating them and delicious

7:50

things to eat. If you have ever seen

7:52

the Disney Johnny apple Seed cartoon,

7:55

there's a lot of talk about ways to eat apples.

7:58

Eating apples was not in the primary concern

8:01

at the time at all. Cider

8:03

was a lot more important. There would be like

8:06

little scrubby apples that were kind of

8:08

bitter that would be pressed into UH

8:10

cider or made into vinegar. A

8:12

lot of people were planning apples. And

8:16

while they could be dried out and

8:18

stored for the winter and serve as a source of

8:20

nourishment, that wasn't their primary

8:22

use. The primary use was

8:25

cider, hard cider and apple jack.

8:27

It was about drunkenness. And then

8:29

it is important to just take that that moment

8:32

to note that I think we petically

8:35

American school children are taught like

8:37

that. He sort of brought apples to the world. It

8:40

was like, look at this wonderful thing I can bring you,

8:42

But in fact everyone was trying to grow apples

8:45

right that one. They weren't really that wonderful

8:47

at that point. They were kind of gross to eat

8:49

that they did not taste very good.

8:52

They were not the big, juicy, yummy things we find supermarket.

8:54

There were lots of other apple people and a lots

8:56

of lots of other orchard people. Uh.

9:00

His personality and things that he

9:02

did just make him particularly memorable

9:04

in the world of orchard

9:06

planting in those days of the frontier.

9:09

He was also just he had a knack

9:12

for figuring out where people were going to go

9:14

next. So he would get seeds

9:16

from Pennsylvania in the winter by picking

9:18

through the refuse at

9:21

the cider presses. He would sort of

9:23

pick through, uh, this pulpy

9:25

stuff that was left over after they made cider.

9:27

He would gather up all these seeds and then he

9:29

would head west and he would

9:31

plant the seeds.

9:34

He would use um the brush

9:37

he had cleared and possibly other brush to make

9:39

offense to keep animals out, and

9:41

then he would go away. And when

9:43

people made it into that territory that

9:45

year, the following year there would already be apple

9:48

seedlings growing on the land which they

9:51

could buy from Chapman. Uh

9:54

So he was a stute in that regard. He was super

9:56

stute in that regard. Had he

9:59

actually turned that into

10:01

a business model. Well, in a

10:03

way, he did turn it into a that was sort of his

10:05

business model, but he didn't really care about

10:08

money. It was more of an apple making

10:10

model than a money making model, right.

10:13

He gave a lot of seedlings away.

10:15

Basically, if you were moving on to land that

10:17

you were hoping to make your own and

10:20

you could not afford your apple seedlings,

10:22

Johnny Apples would give them to you.

10:25

He also if he saw horses that were being mistreated,

10:28

he would buy them from you and then put them out

10:30

to pasture. So endearing, he

10:32

was very endearing. He just I read a

10:34

book that we'll talk more about at the end of the podcast.

10:36

In this and the writer

10:39

compared him to Andrew Carnegie, except that Andrew

10:42

Carnegie amassed wealth and then

10:44

gave it away, and Johnny

10:46

applese just gave away all the wealth as

10:48

he got it, so he never actually had a lot

10:50

because he was giving it all away, no accumulation.

10:53

It's kind of charming, but not really effective if

10:55

your goal is actually to to own

10:57

anything, which apparently wasn't

10:59

his goal, and if it was a goaling

11:02

didn't do it very well.

11:04

Uh. We don't really know his exact route

11:07

through that part of the world. We

11:09

sort of know generally that he went from New York

11:11

into Pennsylvania and then started moving

11:13

into Ohio and Indiana. Uh.

11:16

Several people have tried to kind of recreate

11:18

the route that he followed um,

11:21

with varying success. There's not a lot of

11:24

actual documentation surviving

11:26

about his life at the time. Well, and

11:28

even the documentation is largely based on

11:30

word of mouth, so it's accuracy is not

11:33

verifiable. It's it's yes, And

11:35

in some cases we know that the people who were supplying

11:38

these oral accounts were not necessarily all

11:40

that trustworthy as historians.

11:42

So because a lot of the travel

11:44

that he was doing was ahead of

11:46

the the influx of settlers,

11:50

there weren't really roads, it would be sort of hard

11:52

going. A lot of the actual written detail

11:54

that we have comes from trading post

11:56

ledgers, and one of the first of these

11:59

is in seventeen nine seven in Warren, Pennsylvania,

12:02

at which point John and Nathaniel were

12:05

recorded to be there to buy things. Some

12:07

of the things that he bought included

12:09

a spike gemlet, which is a tool that he

12:11

could have used for all kinds of things out on the frontier.

12:14

It was a very multi use tool. He

12:16

also bought books, cheese, and sundries

12:19

and that truly need your

12:21

books in your chief. Man. If I had books and cheese,

12:24

I would be set. So yeah,

12:26

he that's we know that he was in Warren

12:28

at that time. There are other trading post

12:31

ledger records of his

12:33

movements, but not enough to really piece together.

12:35

This is exactly how he traveled and when,

12:38

and there is some belief that his first

12:40

orchard was actually near Warren on the Allegheny

12:43

River. Warren was very small,

12:45

not having great luck. A storm had knocked

12:48

down all the trees, a fire burned up all the dead

12:50

wood, and then the relationship

12:52

between the settlers and the Native Americans in

12:54

the area got really hostile. It

12:57

was not really the most welcome

13:00

ing or perfect place. There was pretty

13:02

much one person living there when they got

13:04

there. Uh. That was Dan

13:07

McKay or McQuay. He worked

13:09

for the Holland Company, which was one of the agencies

13:11

that was dividing up and selling off land.

13:14

UM. He may have employed the

13:16

Chapman Brothers to kind of guard

13:18

the land against squatters and timber thieves.

13:22

But it's a little unclear whether

13:24

he was actually working for

13:26

this man or or if they just knew each

13:28

other. Um. But according

13:31

to writings of Lancing Wetmore

13:34

UH and the Warren Ledger, john

13:36

eventually picked a location for a nursery in se

13:40

Uh. This is another example of we don't really know how

13:42

accurate this person's report was. He

13:44

was a lawyer and a judge and was pretty

13:46

well respected at the time, but he

13:48

was also really fond of a good story.

13:51

Um. And we know from other accounts that there are

13:53

things that he got completely wrong, so discredits

13:57

him a little telling a little bit. But probably

13:59

the orchard that Johnny apples he planted

14:03

was near Warren uh

14:05

sometime around so

14:09

we know Johnny wanted land,

14:11

and he did buy plenty of land, but

14:13

he didn't stay on it to fulfill the terms

14:15

of his claims or claim

14:18

jumpers got in there and took it from him. Right.

14:21

Uh, So he had skill

14:23

and you know, acumen for planting things,

14:25

but not so much with the patients. No, he didn't

14:27

stick through with things. He would sign nine year

14:29

leases on stuff and then either not pay the bills

14:32

or not fulfill the residency requirements to

14:34

to keep that lease. So there he did

14:36

a lot of getting land and then the land would

14:38

fall out of his hands. Um. He was also

14:40

choosing the hardest way to grow

14:42

apples. Uh. The an

14:45

easier way to grow apples is to graft

14:47

cuttings of apples onto rootstock.

14:50

And that's pretty much how apple cultivation

14:53

happens. Now, what

14:55

he was doing because he felt that it was kinder

14:57

on the plants and that it was in fact wicked

14:59

to it up plants to graph them onto things.

15:02

What he was doing is planting seeds that

15:05

there's a number of reasons why that is not the best way

15:07

to cultivate apples. Yeah,

15:10

I mean I have done

15:12

some apple seedlings, and they are difficult,

15:14

and they don't bear fruit often very well

15:16

for a long time. They tend to

15:18

grow so big that it's hard to harvest

15:21

from them, and it takes them a very long

15:23

time to actually put out apples, and

15:25

then the apples that they do put out. It's

15:27

really a mix of what you're gonna get. Apple

15:30

seeds are pretty cool because

15:32

they're heterozygous, so they have the

15:35

code, the genetic code for all kinds

15:37

of different apples in one seed. You

15:39

don't really know which of those jeans are going to express

15:42

when the tree is growing, so you might plant

15:45

seeds from a delicious apple and get

15:47

disgusting apples. Yeah, there are so

15:49

many factors that go into something like

15:51

that, from like the soil pH you

15:54

know what kind of winters and summers

15:56

it has when it's young, like if

15:58

it has a drought, that will effect what

16:00

is produced. So it is it's a

16:03

very unpredictable and difficult way to get

16:05

fruit, right. But on the

16:07

other side of that, seeds are a lot more

16:09

flexible and when you can plant them you can really

16:11

only graft in the spring, but you can plant

16:14

seeds sort of nine months out of the year. Uh.

16:16

And because of what we said before, those little

16:19

bitter, very tough tart

16:21

apples were in high demand for making

16:24

vinegar and cider, and also

16:26

those things were in demand because vinegar

16:29

was considered to be medicinal uh

16:31

And because out on the frontier there was not a lot to

16:33

do. People were very interested in drinking,

16:36

so it didn't matter so much if you produce delicious

16:38

fruits, just as long as you were producing

16:41

something that could be used in some way to

16:44

cider. Yes. Uh

16:46

so some he sold, as you said,

16:48

and some he gave away. I also wonder,

16:50

going back to his various pieces

16:53

of property, how many people just inherited,

16:55

you know, predeveloped apple right

16:58

because it just never went because he just a and in

17:00

the spot. There are a lot

17:02

of records that survive, whether

17:05

it's because bookkeeping with sloppy

17:07

or just you know, time has kind

17:09

of erased some of the German documents.

17:12

But the oral history it's

17:15

pretty unanimous in that if you couldn't

17:17

afford trees, he would just give them to

17:19

you. And the lack of records is

17:22

a problem in terms of tracking many

17:24

things. You know, his sale of seedlings, his land,

17:27

his forfeits of the land, whether

17:30

or not, and this is getting into some interesting

17:33

elements of the story. He was

17:35

actually a minister or a missionary

17:37

of the Church of New Jerusalem. The

17:40

Church of the New Jerusalem is a church that people

17:42

may not have heard of now.

17:45

It was also known as the New Church, and it

17:47

was based on Swedish men mystic

17:49

Emmanuel Swedenborg, who was a popular

17:52

religious figure for about a hundred years

17:54

following his death in seventeen seventy two.

17:57

The Swedenborg sect

17:59

was really antellectual. He wrote volumes

18:01

and volumes and volumes about

18:04

his divine revelations and his spiritual

18:06

thought. He was very specific

18:08

about things. A lot of religious

18:11

writing can be kind of general in describing

18:14

what God is like or what Heaven is like, and he

18:16

was really down to the details and

18:18

described his religious

18:20

visions in extreme detail. Uh.

18:23

And he was also very influential. Some

18:25

of the notable people who

18:27

were influenced by him include William

18:30

Blake, Charles Baudelaire, Garta car

18:33

Carl Young, William but earlier, Yates,

18:35

Walt Whitman who I love, and

18:37

Emerson. So he was a very

18:40

influential writer at the time. He had a really

18:42

strong streak of intellectualism.

18:46

UM his with the church that

18:48

was founded on his teachings, which was known as the New Church.

18:50

UM had sort of areas

18:53

of the United States that was developing at

18:55

the time that where that was extremely

18:57

popular and it was also very different

18:59

from a lot of the other church going

19:02

that was happening on the frontier, which was much more

19:04

about tent revivals and that sort

19:06

of thing. And this was a much thinkier sort

19:09

of religion, and Johnny

19:11

Appleseed embraced it, he really did.

19:14

He actually started preaching the New Church

19:16

teachings while he traveled about. So

19:18

when he was in Ohio and he would take shelter with

19:20

people, he would bring them the good news straight

19:23

from Heaven. Yes. Uh. In

19:25

eighteen twenty nine, a fundamentalist

19:28

preacher named Adam Paine actually asked the crowd,

19:30

where is your barefoot pilgrim now? And John

19:32

Chapman, dressed in rags with unkempt hair, held

19:34

up a foot and said here he is,

19:37

yes, which is so charming. And

19:39

that's sort of an example of the intersection between

19:41

the more tent revival esque religion

19:44

that was pretty common in a lot

19:46

of that area at the time, and and then John Chapman,

19:48

who was really an outsider and

19:50

a loner and not like that at all. Um

19:53

he also he definitely was not operating

19:55

in isolation that the New Church knew

19:57

that he was around and knew that he was spreading

20:00

their teachings, um. Because he appears

20:02

in reports of the New Church and in other

20:05

writings from the church starting in around eighteen

20:07

seventeen, so he was a known figure to

20:09

the church as part

20:12

of this whole religious focus.

20:14

He was a vegetarian, and he was celibate, as

20:17

in our recent episode about Marjorie Kemp,

20:20

though he did have spiritual relationships

20:23

with people who were not physically present. So he

20:25

was having what we're going to call spiritual

20:27

intercourse um with the spirits

20:29

of two deceased women who

20:32

were to He was told in a vision that they were going

20:34

to be his companions in the afterlife.

20:36

This is also something that Swedenborg wrote about

20:38

in his writings. Yeah, apparently

20:41

he had apparently hoped to propose to Nancy

20:44

Tannehill, but she was already engaged. That's

20:46

one of those stories that exists about his life

20:48

that is sort of one person's word and and

20:50

we don't really know if that's a true story, but we do

20:52

know that he he never got married. He

20:55

was reported to be celibate for his whole life.

20:58

UM. I don't know if if the Nancy

21:00

Tannehill story is a true story or

21:02

not, but it is a thing that somebody said about him at

21:04

one point. Yeah, it's a it's a side note

21:07

in the story of his relations with women

21:10

and with his religion, since those

21:12

all sort of, uh, they contradict each

21:14

other a little bit. And

21:16

now we're getting to an era that it's

21:19

often talked about in history but not necessarily

21:21

relation to him, which is the War of eighteen

21:23

twelve. Yes, he was

21:25

really skilled at walking, like he

21:27

that's walking was something that he

21:30

was just great at, and he he was reported

21:32

too often not wear shoes, and he walked so much

21:34

that his feet had these leather like calluses.

21:37

And because he was so good

21:39

at walking around, and because he knew the territory

21:42

so well, settlers sometimes would hire

21:44

him to kind of keep an eye on things

21:47

as tensions were starting to grow leading up to

21:49

the War of eighteen twelve. UM. At

21:51

least one time he either falsely or

21:53

mistakenly raised the alarm about

21:56

incoming troops who were going

21:58

to attack, when it they were actually American

22:01

troops. UM.

22:04

In spite of that, or maybe because this

22:06

story had not reached where he was, he

22:09

did have a very Paul Revere's

22:11

Ride esque race

22:13

for help that he reportedly

22:16

undertook UH in September of

22:18

eighteen twelve, colonel named Colonel Kratzer

22:21

was going to remove the Native American

22:23

population from southwest Ohio. He

22:26

convinced a preacher named James Compass,

22:28

who the Native Americans they're trusted,

22:31

to help him move them,

22:33

like remove them from their homes. He

22:35

did this by saying that he didn't want bloodshed,

22:37

he just wanted to take these people under the protection

22:39

of the government. Uh. The

22:42

reverend believed him and

22:44

and convinced the people

22:46

in this one village to move. The

22:49

response of the colonel's troops then

22:52

was to set their homes on fire, and this sparked

22:54

a lot of problems, understandably

22:57

because that was a terrible thing to do. Uh.

22:59

There were of revenge on both sides.

23:01

It's kind of a long and drawn out story, but

23:03

there was. You know, the one

23:06

side would ambush another side, and

23:08

then the other side would retaliate, and then

23:10

on an unfortunate fallout

23:13

from that, a young person would wind up

23:15

being killed. It's a very kind of long

23:17

and convoluted story. But it became clear

23:19

that things were getting very bad and that a full

23:21

scale attack was incoming,

23:25

and people were very worried and and

23:27

we're basically like, we need back up, and

23:30

Johnny Appleseed volunteered to

23:32

be that backup or to go

23:34

for that backup. Um. According to the

23:36

lore, he ran bareheaded

23:38

and barefooted, leaving at sunset and

23:41

running through the night, running a distance

23:43

that was effectively a marathon there and

23:45

a marathon back. Holly

23:47

might know about how hard that would be. UM.

23:50

It's actually more likely that he was on horse.

23:52

But the story is that he was on foot

23:55

running and he would raise the alarm at farms

23:57

and homesteads that he passed on the way, UM

24:01

as he ran to a fort

24:03

at Mount Vernon to get help and to

24:05

raise the alarm. This whole

24:07

story probably has a fair amount

24:09

of it's been mythologized. It's definitely

24:12

been mythologized. Um. It does appear

24:14

to be a historic thing that actually happened.

24:16

Probably he was not running unfit the whole time.

24:19

UM, But that really started

24:21

to solidify him as a mythic figure,

24:23

even at the time, not just now,

24:26

even though now that that's a story that maybe people

24:28

outside of that region of the United States haven't heard

24:30

about. But he was becoming

24:33

a mythic figure even while he was alive.

24:36

Well, that was probably aided by the fact that he

24:38

was a little bit, as you said, kind

24:40

of an odd fellow. He wasn't really a

24:42

mainstream society kind of guy, so

24:45

he already had a bit of a mystique in all

24:47

likelihood, and then that combined with

24:49

some of these sort of amazing tales of his

24:51

doing, that really is fertile

24:54

ground to create a mythology around someone.

24:56

Yes, he was very odd and very memorable,

24:59

and usually the because of his pattern of

25:01

moving around, he would move into

25:03

a place before a lot of people were there, he

25:05

would do things that were memorable, and then the

25:07

population would start to move into this area

25:09

where he previously had been and had already

25:11

made a name for himself, and they would sort of hear these Johnny

25:14

Appleseed stories. Um.

25:16

So he had a pretty huge reputation,

25:19

uh in the era in which he lived and in

25:21

the years afterward, and

25:24

that has continued today. People

25:26

don't necessarily know all these other aspects of him, but

25:28

they most people have heard of Johnny Appleseed

25:30

before. Yeah, and I mean he's got

25:32

the name Johnny Appleseed and John Chapman. So

25:35

so in eighteen o five,

25:38

his family, UM

25:40

had moved to Duck Creek, Ohio, and they were in really

25:42

rough financial situation. But

25:45

there isn't evidence of whether or not John

25:48

reunited with them. He

25:50

was kind of a loner, as we had said, even

25:52

from the church, even though he supported

25:55

it and spread their teachings. He wasn't really

25:57

you know, attending socials or attending regular

26:00

right and they're writing about him. Started to

26:02

fall off as

26:04

he got later in his life and maybe

26:07

increasingly odd in his behavior.

26:10

UM. So we don't really know if he was on good

26:12

terms with his family when he died. We we don't

26:14

really know if he had any close relationships

26:17

at that point. UM. But he did die peacefully,

26:20

but of illness at the age of seventy at

26:22

the home of William Worth in His

26:25

home was north of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and

26:28

that was in March of eighteen forty five. UM.

26:30

The official accounts at the time kind of

26:33

vary in their specific dates,

26:35

but generally recognize that sometime in

26:37

the middle of March. UH. The cause

26:39

was known as winter plague, and that was sort of a

26:41

catch all term for various diseases that people

26:43

tended to get more in the winter. UH.

26:46

There was an obituary that ran on March eighteen

26:49

forty five and the Fort Wayne Sentinel. And

26:51

what is kind of striking to me about his death

26:53

at the age of seventy is that the life expectancy

26:55

at the time was a little over forty. So

26:58

he was very very old when

27:00

he passed away. So not at all surprising

27:03

that a man of that advanced age would

27:05

succumb to winter plague.

27:07

I mean, we'd know, even in modern

27:10

times, the elderly are, you know, at

27:12

greater risk of even you know, pretty minor

27:14

illnesses that younger people could live through. So

27:17

to have been seventies pretty impressive, especially

27:20

when you consider that he spent most of his time wandering around

27:22

in the woods, you know what I mean. It wasn't

27:25

like he lived a life of luxury

27:27

and comfort with every possible

27:29

you know, cleanliness applied to his universe,

27:32

and not even luxury and comfort, but just basic

27:34

medical care and having a home. He

27:36

didn't really have any of that. He

27:38

did own some things when he died, and

27:41

among his his effects after

27:43

his death he had a gray

27:45

mare, uh, several parcels

27:48

of land, an orchard of two

27:50

thousand apple trees, and various other things.

27:53

Some of the land got sold off to pay the back taxes

27:55

on that land because he had not paid it, which

27:58

is not surprising um. And then the

28:00

remainder of his possessions were sold off for a

28:02

total of four hundred and nine dollars, which

28:04

would come to about nine thousand dollars today.

28:07

But pretty much all of that money went

28:09

to paying off various things that he had owed

28:11

during his life. Some of these

28:13

claims might have been true, when some of them might have been

28:15

false, but there were people who

28:17

claims to who have to have provided him

28:20

room and board in his later life. He definitely

28:22

as as his m O was kind

28:24

of to get land, plant things, and leave.

28:27

He definitely did owe money on things.

28:29

So by the time all of that was

28:32

was taken care of, there was really no money

28:34

left In the John Chapman's last

28:36

Johnny attle Sea to state, yeah, he had no fiscal

28:39

legacy to speak of. It is interesting

28:41

I think that the obituary from

28:43

the church did not appear until

28:46

two years after he had dined. Yes, it

28:48

was much later. Just interesting

28:50

and I don't think we know why it took so long now

28:53

that if we do, I did not find that unless

28:56

it's just a matter of things taking a while to get

28:58

back to them. Uh. And

29:00

here's another interesting thing about him,

29:02

which sort of I also find oddly endearing.

29:06

He did a little bit of self mythologizing

29:09

and promoting in terms

29:11

of his methods. He

29:14

was simultaneously a loner and someone

29:16

who likes to talk to people. So

29:18

he did talk to people, and he talked to people about

29:21

himself. He liked to entertain little children.

29:23

He would entertain little boys by like, uh,

29:25

poking pins into his crazy

29:27

calloused feet, and and he liked to give

29:30

presents to uh, to children

29:32

Like he he was a person who endeared himself

29:35

to others. People generally liked him

29:37

a lot, but the way that he talked about

29:39

himself was often sort

29:41

of selective. Like he he didn't really talk about

29:44

his many many failed purchases

29:46

of land, you know. He talked about being

29:48

a vegetarian and spreading the word of God and

29:51

and planting apple trees, and so he had

29:53

sort of made himself into an

29:56

easily mythologized person.

29:59

Uh. But or he became a

30:02

sort of mythic character in

30:04

American history. Even at

30:06

the time, there were people pretty well

30:08

known people who sort of eulogized him,

30:10

either in in speeches or

30:13

in print. Uh. There was a reported

30:15

eulogy by Sam Houston, who was a senator.

30:18

UH. That is a little bit suspect. We're not sure

30:20

if that really happened or if it's apocryphal. UH.

30:23

William T. Sherman is one of the people who

30:25

allegedly, UH

30:28

spoke very highly of Johnny

30:30

Appleseed later on. Uh.

30:33

There's also a lot of reports

30:35

that he had a really good relationship with

30:38

many of the Native American tribes in

30:40

the frontier, even when those tribes

30:42

were really at odds with the settlers. Uh.

30:45

And that is one of those oral history things

30:47

that we don't really have written

30:50

substantiation of that. That sort of the aura

30:52

that he had was, which was

30:54

he was friendly with everyone, even

30:56

when the people he was friendly with were not friendly

30:59

with one another. Well, and I think that either

31:01

could be that you get into a chicken or

31:03

the egg thing where it's like, is that was

31:05

that because he was always sort of apart

31:08

from everyone to some degree, Like he wasn't

31:10

anti social, but he wasn't really, as

31:12

we said, part of a you know, social

31:15

group regularly. So he could kind

31:17

of operate between those two because he didn't

31:19

have obvious allegiance to anyone

31:22

um or I mean, did he perpetrate

31:24

that and you know, continue that behavior

31:27

because he recognized that it was beneficial. We

31:29

don't know. Yes. There was also the part

31:31

about how he did seem to you in a lot of ways

31:33

because he was not exploiting land. He

31:35

was he was sort of tending trees

31:38

and not wanting to harm things, and not wanting to

31:40

harm animals. There's

31:42

the idea that he had a good relationship

31:44

with other cultures that

31:46

also had a similar mentality.

31:48

It's kind of a misperception that the entirety

31:51

of Native American history was all about conserving

31:54

the land, but that that definitely was a

31:56

threat in some tribes, and so that's

31:58

sort of a commonality that he had

32:00

with other people. Also that that there

32:02

have continued to be all kinds of other writings about Johnny

32:05

Appleseen. There was an article in Harper's

32:07

New Monthly about him in eighteen seventy one

32:09

that was extremely lengthy.

32:11

He was the subject of the poem in Praise of Johnny

32:14

Appleseed by Batchel lindsay In,

32:18

and he's also been in various other poems

32:21

and films. Um Disney has

32:23

a thing from N eight that's about Johnny

32:25

Appleseed. It

32:27

is just wrong. It's completely wrong. Um.

32:30

It's one of the things that figures prominently in it

32:32

is that he wore a saucepot on his head as a hat.

32:35

There is actually one historical account

32:37

of him wearing three things on

32:39

his head as hats simultaneously. In

32:41

the middle of them was a saucepan. But

32:44

I don't think he wore a saucepan on his head

32:48

in con practice. Um. So if

32:50

it is

32:52

a delightful thing to watch, but it is so

32:55

incorrect in so many ways. Um.

32:58

There are apple or apple holes surviving

33:01

that are probably descended from apple trees

33:04

that he planted. Apple trees don't live hundreds

33:06

of years, but because

33:09

people propagate apple trees by grafting

33:11

things, those graphs are clones of the

33:13

trees that they were cut off of. So

33:16

uh, there are some trees in

33:18

existence that that probably came from once

33:20

that he planted. But a lot of the orchards

33:22

that were credited to him, um as far

33:25

as starting them, were burned down during the Temperance movement

33:27

movement because, as we said, apples

33:29

at the time were for drinking, not

33:32

for eating, not as a delightful nature's

33:35

candy treat. So

33:37

yeah, Johnny apple Tree, I had no idea of

33:39

either the

33:41

depths of his religious devotion or

33:44

the sort of Paul Revere like run.

33:47

I didn't know of either of those two things

33:49

when I started researching this podcast. I kind

33:51

of can't stop thinking about whether or not he actually ran

33:53

that because there are people that

33:55

can run that much. I mean, they're ultramarathoners

33:58

out there. Yes, and if he is wandering

34:00

around all the time, it's possible. Yes.

34:02

I read the book Johnny Appleseed, The Man, the Myth

34:05

and the American Story by Howard Means as

34:07

part of my research for this podcast. There

34:09

is so much more information about

34:11

him and about the time in that book than we

34:13

have gone into today. But one of the things

34:16

that it talked about is people trying to determine

34:18

whether that run was possible to have

34:20

done on foot. Uh, And

34:22

the answer is sort of maybe. So

34:26

yeah, So it makes sense that I would be sitting

34:28

here going I don't he could have done it? Maybe.

34:32

Do you also have listener mail? I do have listener

34:34

mail, and this listener mail is about an

34:36

episode that is from before you or I joined

34:38

this podcast, UM, which is probably

34:41

gonna be a theme that crops up for a little

34:43

while. For a little while as we continue

34:45

to UH to put out

34:47

new episodes with the two of us UM.

34:50

This one is from Zara or

34:52

Zara. I apologize if I said your name wrong, UH,

34:56

and Zara says, I really enjoy your podcast,

34:58

but I hadn't been able to listen to it for a i'll

35:00

due to large amounts of homework. I've been catching

35:02

up over the past few days by listening to old

35:04

episodes as I put this semester's notes

35:07

into my computer before mid terms. I

35:10

love that listening to the podcast while

35:12

studying other things is pretty cool. I

35:14

was listening to your October episode on Madam

35:17

La Lourie when I heard something that reminded

35:19

me of my African American Studies class.

35:22

You mentioned that a lot of people thought that the La

35:24

Lori's were not must not be so bad because

35:26

their coachman was always very well dressed

35:28

and looked well fed and clean. While

35:30

I'm sure people used to convince themselves

35:33

that the Lo Loris weren't up to anything,

35:35

that actually wouldn't have been a very good indicator

35:37

of how they treated the rest of their slaves. As

35:39

slave owners would often take pride in

35:41

keeping their coachman particularly well fed,

35:43

groomed, and dressed. This wasn't so

35:46

much because they cared about the coachman, but because

35:48

it was a way of showing off how wealthy they were.

35:50

Anyway, I thought you might find this interesting

35:52

and thanks for all the great listening material. Thank

35:55

you so much. That is interesting. That's

35:57

a great episode too, and it's also

35:59

it's fast dating to me to look at the various

36:01

things that people use to express their wealth

36:04

in previous eras. That

36:07

is also why we have sweet tea in theself, because

36:10

if you could afford ice and sugar, you

36:12

must be doing it right right. So yes,

36:14

thank you very much for writing to us. If

36:17

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36:19

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