This Week in History: The legend of Johnny Appleseed
- ANTONE PIERUCCI
- Posted On
Perspective makes a world of difference.
It’s the difference between what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s bad and what’s good, and who’s a hero and who’s a villain.
It’s also both the maker of legends and the source of their debunking.
Take the life and work of one John Chapman.
You haven’t heard of him? Well, let me help alter your perspective. John Chapman is better known as Johnny Appleseed.
Born John Chapman in Leominster, Massachusetts, on Sept. 26, 1774, he was the son of Nathaniel and Elizabeth Chapman. When he was just 2 years old, his father left the family to fight first as a minuteman at the Battle of Concord, and later as a soldier in the Continental Army under General George Washington.
While her husband was away fighting, Elizabeth died giving birth to what would have been John’s little sibling. When he came back from the Revolution, Nathaniel remarried and gave little Johnny 10 half-siblings.
Very little is known about John’s early life. Sometime in his young adulthood, he made his way out west to Ohio, likely with the rest of his family. Since his father was a farmer, John was likely encouraged to become an orchardist – a very profitable specialty.
Regardless of how it happened, we know that by 1812, John Chapman had established himself as an independent orchardist and nurseryman – a job that required him to travel frequently.
Throughout his life, John would travel through Ohio and Pennsylvania, planting orchards of his preferred crop (apples) seemingly at random. In reality, cold hard economics dictated where he set out his orchards.
John Chapman would plant an orchard and return, some years later, to sell off his crop and the land around it. You see, orchards (and other crops) served as a strong legal claim to property along the frontiers of America at the time. By traveling around and planting orchards of apples, John Chapman staked claim to valuable virgin land. At the time of his death, he owned 1,200 acres.
While travelling all over the American frontier, John Chapman also preached his religion. He was a member of the New Church, also known as the Church of Swedenborg.
Informed by the writings of scientist and Swedish Lutheran theologian Emanuel Swedenborg, the New Church believed Swedenborg’s claim that he had received divine visions of the traditional Christian religion being replaced by a new one.
John’s preaching of this doctrine likely added to his eccentricity and encouraged his later assumption to legend.
Other eccentricities of Mr. Chapman included his penchant for walking around in a threadbare outfit, absent shoes but with a tin hat on his head.
He was a firm believer in animal rights and was a lifelong vegetarian. In this perspective of the man, people excused his quirks because they heard that as a child John had been kicked in the head by a horse.
The other perspective of John Chapman celebrates his eccentricities and paints him as Johnny Appleseed – an itinerant outdoorsman who introduced apples to the American frontier.
In this version of the man, the economic incentive for his planting is expunged along with all mention that the apples he planted were used to make hard cider, not sweet apple pies.
So, on the one hand we have John Chapman, slightly addled by a swift kick in the noggin but otherwise a shrewd businessman who capitalized on loose land laws and the alcoholic tendencies of his fellow man.
But on the other is the childhood nursery character of Johnny Appleseed, a jolly wanderer who spread joy and seeds wherever he went.
Like I said, perspective makes a world of difference.
Antone Pierucci is curator of history at the Riverside County Park and Open Space District and a freelance writer whose work has been featured in such magazines as Archaeology and Wild West as well as regional California newspapers.