Born in Leominster, Massachusetts, on September 26, 1774, John Chapman is remembered in American folklore and legend as “Johnny Appleseed.” In the popular imagination, Johnny Appleseed is an abiding figure with a burlap coffee sack for a shirt, an old pot for a hat, ragged pants, and bare feet. He is best known for traveling from western Pennsylvania through the heartland of Ohio and Indiana, planting thousands of apple seeds and seedlings and gladly giving away thousands more. Johnny Appleseed is associated with missionary zeal for apples and orchards, an identification rendered all the more potent for his legendary devotion to and knowledge of the Bible. Johnny Appleseed is also representative of the “Wildman of the Woods” motif, a child of nature who was purported to be beloved of children, animals, and Native Americans alike.
John Chapman became legendary for wandering through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana in the 1800–1840 period planting apple trees and preaching the Gospel. His simple lifestyle and Swedenborgian convictions made him a colorful, if mysterious, figure and attracted the attention of many future storytellers. This painting of John Chapman can be seen at the Johnny Appleseed Educational Center and Museum at Urbana University in Urbana, Ohio. (AP Photo)
Johnny Appleseed was passionately devoted to the establishment of apple orchards and the settled agrarian life they represented, but his folkloric figure was paradoxically at home in and enamored of the very wilderness he sought by his efforts to civilize. Likewise, his buoyant openness of spirit was said to have endeared him to the Native Americans with whom he came into contact, although his end goals would ultimately coincide with their displacement by the settlers whom Johnny so cheerfully provided with apple seeds. Although John Chapman certainly brought a missionary zeal to his dissemination of both the word of God and the apple seeds with which he came to be identified, he was an active nurseryman and orchardman on his own account, as well, and possessed some 1,200 acres of arable land at the time of his death due to exposure on March 18, 1845.
The historical John Chapman, whose life provided the foundation for this folkloric figure, is reported to have begun his life as “Johnny Appleseed” by collecting apple seeds from cider presses in western Pennsylvania. There are reports of Chapman planting seeds in Ohio as early as 1801, and for the next forty-odd years he was an itinerant orchardman, roaming—mostly on foot—between the Ohio River to the south and Lake Erie to the north, from Pennsylvania in the east to central Indiana in the west. Though most accounts of Johnny Appleseed describe him as a barefoot pilgrim, walking back and forth across wide swathes of the newly opened fields west of the Alleghenies, there is a record of at least one journey he made via river in 1806. According to this account, Johnny lashed together two canoes and drifted down the Ohio to the mouth of the Muskingum, at the site of the Marietta settlement. From there he paddled upstream all the way up to Ashland, via the Walhonding, the Mohican, and the Black Fork. By all accounts, this journey must have been arduous in the extreme, involving multiple portages in addition to the difficulties of paddling up the various tributaries.
Johnny skirted the very western edges of the European-American settlements of his time, always seeking to bring apple seeds to the verge of the frontier; in such places he would seek suitable soil for planting seedlings, which would grow for some years just where he planted them, marked off and protected by such boundaries as Johnny could contrive with little effort on the spot. There the young trees would stay and grow until such a time that nearby settlers found it practical to transplant them into their own new orchards. The rolling hills and plains of Ohio and Indiana were perfect for such purposes, crossed as they are by myriad rivers, streams, and washes; the soil in the areas Johnny favored tend to be the rich, dark humus of river valleys, and often he planted his seeds in small, level, stream-side clearings favored by good sunlight and fenced off by massive old-growth forests.
Johnny Appleseed is described in contemporary accounts as wiry and small, with long, disheveled hair and a sparse and patchy beard. Notable among his features were his piercing eyes. He was said to have had an extraordinary tolerance for pain and cold, and he was generally clad only in cast-offs of the rudest sorts; Johnny is said to have walked shoeless, regardless of the weather. One popular story about Johnny Appleseed in this regard tells of how a man once forced a pair of shoes upon the barefoot Johnny because of the brutal cold. Some days later, however, this same Good Samaritan was dumbfounded and angered to see Johnny blithely walking barefoot down the streets of town, his feet blue from the cold. When questioned about this by his irate benefactor, Johnny replied that he had given the shoes to someone whose need was greater than his own.
It is said that Johnny Appleseed was always welcomed by the Native Americans of the Ohio and Indiana wilderness, who seemed to revere him as a sort of wandering shaman or holy fool who traveled under the protection of the spirit world. Some oral accounts of aged settlers who remembered Johnny from their childhoods indicate that this protection even extended to the allies of the British during the War of 1812. Even during the height of that conflict—which was particularly brutal on the frontier—Johnny Appleseed was able to continue his foot travels unhindered and unscathed; indeed, at least one account claims that he traveled under the cloak of this immunity right through the lines of the enemy into settlements about to be razed by fire and tomahawk, offering midnight warnings to settlers concerning their imminent peril. Many American frontier families thus escaped certain death, and the children of these families recounted Johnny’s sudden appearance as little less than a miracle out of scripture. Indeed, Johnny Appleseed himself often quoted scripture at length, and he attributed both his mission and his protection to God.
The Rise of the Hippies and American Nature Children
Although the “back to nature movement” is most usually associated with the countercultural tide that resulted in the hippie phenomenon in the America of the 1960s and 1970s, periodic rejection of the mores and structures of the American Dream are part and parcel of the history and culture of the United States. Thoreau’s Walden articulated a philosophy based upon just such a realignment of values and was, indeed, embraced by the hippie generation, perhaps most notably by its association with “Doonesbury,” the comic-strip chronicle of the hippie zeitgeist. Moreover, the “tramp” and the “hobo” icons of the Railroad Age also have similar associations, and many hippies embraced a life on the open road in the same time-honored fashion. In some ways, however, Johnny Appleseed provides the most compelling precursor of the hippie movement in American folklore, and he embodies many attributes associated with the hippies: John Chapman—perhaps America’s first itinerant organic orchardman—abandoned the staid and settled East for the wilds of what was then the West, just as many hippies eschewed their middle-class homes and suburbs for communal work and life on rustic organic farms. Johnny Appleseed also embraced the native peoples he moved among, just as many hippies attempted to appropriate the spirituality and trappings of Native American peoples. Finally, Johnny Appleseed was renowned for his spirituality and pacifism, both of which were earmarks—albeit in very different ways—of the hippies.
C. Fee
Johnny Appleseed’s devotion to the word of God was itself legendary, and many contemporary accounts of him mention his love of scripture. When visiting a frontier family, it was his custom, such records indicate, to stretch out his bones upon the split-log floor of the house after supper, to gaze fervently toward the ceiling, and—the proper reverential mood established—to ask those in attendance if they would care to hear fresh news direct from heaven. At this point Johnny would pull from his ragged bundle of belongings a copy of the New Testament, from which he would read at length in a rich and sonorous voice, giving his subject the drama, pathos, or respect that it required. Many years later, aged listeners informed chroniclers that Johnny Appleseed’s readings of the Bible were among their most lasting and treasured memories of their youth on the frontier.
Although Johnny Appleseed regularly partook of the charitable offerings of food that came his way, he was also famous for his diet, which was in every way as ascetic in nature as was his eccentric wardrobe of cast-off rags. Johnny considered it a sin to slay any creature, and he was said to eschew fire rather than kill mosquitoes. Indeed, Johnny is said to have lived off scraps, sometimes rescuing morsels from pig slops and preaching on the subject “waste not, want not.” In his diet, as well as in his mode of dress and in his peregrinations in the wilderness, then, Johnny Appleseed has been portrayed as a sort of saintly figure, a latter-day prophet of sorts, a Francis of Assisi of the frontier forest of the New World, simple in lifestyle, beloved of man, beast, and child, whose very simplicity was a hallmark of his sanctity.
Johnny Appleseed has proven a remarkably enduring figure in the popular American imagination. Carl Sandburg—who took it as his life’s mission to enshrine for posterity all things truly indicative of the spirit of Americana—of course wrote of Johnny. Further, Vachel Lindsay composed the most well known of his “singing poems” about the Apple Prophet, entitling his work “In Praise of Johnny Appleseed.” Johnny Appleseed was also the subject of a very popular 1948 animated feature in Disney’s American Legends series, and John Chapman was immortalized on a U.S. postage stamp. Even a brand of hard cider has taken the name “Johnny Appleseed.” Moreover, countless children’s books, plays, and cartoons have immortalized the barefoot pilgrim of the apple orchard, and John Chapman’s childlike Christian faith has been immortalized by the hymn that bears his name, which is, to this day, sung around the supper table by countless American families, including my own: “Oh, the Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord, for giving me the things I need: The sun, and the rain, and the apple seeds; the Lord is good to me! Amen.”
American folklorists have found ample traditions in popular oral culture attesting to Johnny Appleseed’s purported range and activities; these notably include many orchards said to have originated by his hand. Although likely true in at least some such cases, some scholars suggest that many of these instances are evidence of a form of “fakelore after the fact”; that is, after the wide dissemination of the legends of Johnny Appleseed, folk traditions may well have been transformed (or outright invented) so that they aligned local traditions with this transcendent national figure.
Johnny Appleseed died in the vicinity of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and his life is celebrated and his death is commemorated each year at the annual festival held in his name in that city. The festival is held the third full weekend of September in two adjoining parks, Archer Park and Johnny Appleseed Park, the latter of which contains a makeshift campground. Although Archer Park purports to be the actual site of John Chapman’s grave, this claim is the subject of some debate. In any case, however, there is a small graveyard of the locally prominent Archer family to be found in the area. Founded four decades ago, the Johnny Appleseed festival is noteworthy in that it imposes stringent requirements upon all the participating vendors, requiring that period clothing, food, and technologies be used throughout the festival. The idea is to give visitors a little sample of the sights, smells, sounds, and tastes of Johnny Appleseed’s life and times. Some 200 vendors currently participate, and thousands of visitors come annually to learn about Johnny Appleseed and to experience what life in the early nineteenth century was like on the Indiana frontier. As part of the festivities, a living history reenactor portrays John Chapman for visiting children. The Johnny Appleseed Festival’s emphasis on early Americana taps into the abiding popularity of the folk hero himself.
A favorite traditional hero of American children’s stories, Johnny Appleseed combined the saintly qualities of a religious pilgrim with a love of nature and animals and a reputation for playful good humor and good relations with the Native Americans. In some ways, John Chapman is remembered as a sort of apple-planting St. Francis of the Ohio River Valley. In addition, Johnny Appleseed is valorized as being perfectly in touch with the flora and fauna around him, and his vast knowledge of medicinal herbs is cited as an example of the benefits of his spiritual connection with nature. Moreover, the figure of the “Natural Man,” unspoiled by the depravities and sophistication of a rapidly modernizing world, is a recurrent theme in American culture. The ragged eccentric living in harmony with man, beast, and the elements on the very margins of civilization is a much celebrated one in American legend and folklore, and has both inspired and been shaped by various movements in American thought from the time of the first European settlers, through the Romantic and transcendentalist movements, right up to the modern day. Indeed, in some ways Johnny Appleseed could be construed as a forerunner to the back-to-nature movement of the counterculture of the mid-twentieth century, and the lone wolf, antiestablishment nature-lover is still valorized by certain strata of American culture to the present day.
C. Fee
See also Legends; Mountain Men; Shamans
Further Reading
“Appleseed, Johnny.” 2000. The Penguin Dictionary of American Folklore. New York: Penguin Reference, p. 15.
Hillis, Newell Dwight. 1904. The Quest of John Chapman: The Story of a Forgotten Hero. New York: Macmillan.
“Johnny Appleseed.” 1999. Myths, Legends, and Folktales of America: An Anthology. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 126–130.
Johnny Appleseed Festival, Inc. 2014. http://www.johnnyappleseedfest.com/. Accessed August 20, 2015.
“Johnny Appleseed Was Born.” 2014. America’s Story from America’s Library. http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/revolut/jb_revolut_apple_1.html. Accessed August 20, 2015.
McCormick, Charlie T., and Kim Kennedy White. 2011. Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Beliefs, Customs, Tales, Music, and Art. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, p. 593.
Appleseed, Johnny—Primary Document
W. D. Haley, “Johnny Appleseed: A Pioneer Hero” (1871)
Johnny Appleseed is a quintessential figure of American mythology, best known for wandering the wilderness of Ohio barefooted with a tin pot for a cap. Such Johnny Appleseed legends seem to stem from a historical figure named Jonathan Chapman. However, as this article in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine illustrates, it is difficult to separate fact from fiction. While it is presented as a historical narrative relying only on verifiable eyewitness testimony, the author nevertheless includes descriptions of Chapman that clearly belong to the realm of folklore. These include Chapman’s superhuman tolerance of pain and the radiance of his face before death.
Among the heroes of endurance that was voluntary, and of action that was creative and not sanguinary, there was one man whose name, seldom mentioned now save by some of the few surviving pioneers, deserves to be perpetuated.
The first reliable trace of our modest hero finds him in the Territory of Ohio, in 1801, with a horse-load of apple seeds, which he planted in various places on and about the borders of Licking Creek, the first orchard thus originated by him being on the farm of Isaac Stadden, in succeeding years, although he was undoubtedly following the same strange occupation, we have no authentic account of his movements until we reach a pleasant day in 1806, when a pioneer settler in Jefferson County, Ohio noticed a peculiar craft, with a remarkable occupant and a curious cargo, slowly dropping down with the current of the Ohio River. It was “Johnny Appleseed,” by which name Jonathan Chapman was afterward known in every log-cabin from the Ohio River to the Northern lakes, and westward to the prairies of what is now the State of Indiana. With two canoes lashed together he was transporting a load of apple seeds to the Western frontier, for the purpose of creating orchards on the farthest verge of white settlements. With his canoes he passed down the Ohio to Marietta, where he entered the Muskingum, ascending the stream of that river until he reached the mouth of the Walhounding, or White Woman Creek, and still onward, up the Mohican, into the Black Fork, to the head of navigation, in the region now known as Ashland and Richland counties, on the line of the Pittsburgh and Fort Wayne Railroad, in Ohio. A long and toilsome voyage it was, as a glance at the map will show, and must have occupied a great deal of time, as the lonely traveler stopped at every inviting spot to plant the seeds and makes his infant nurseries. These are the first well-authenticated facts in the history of Jonathan Chapman, whose birth, there is good reason for believing, occurred in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1775. According to this, which was his own statement in one of his less reticent moods, he was, at the time of his appearance on Licking Creek, twenty-six years of age, and whether impelled in his eccentricities by some absolute misery of the heart which could only find relief in incessant motion, or governed by a benevolent monomania, his whole after-life was devoted to the work of planting apple seeds in remote places.
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In personal appearance Chapman was a small, wiry man, full of restless activity; he had long dark hair, a scanty beard that was never shaved, and keen black eyes that sparkled with a peculiar brightness. His dress was of the oddest description. Generally, even in the coldest weather he went barefooted, but sometimes, for his long journeys, he would make himself a rude pair of sandals; at other times he would wear any cast-off foot-covering he chanced to find—a boot on one foot and an old brogan or a moccasin on the other. It appears to have been a matter of conscience with him never to purchase shoes, although he was rarely without money enough to do so. On one occasion, in an unusually cold November, while he was traveling barefooted through mud and snow, a settler who happened to possess a pair of shoes that were too small for his own use forced their acceptance upon Johnny, declaring that it was sinful for a human being to travel with naked feet in such weather.
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The Indians treated Johnny with the greatest kindness. By these wild and sanguinary savages he was regarded as a “great medicine man,” on account of his strange appearance, eccentric actions, and, especially, the fortitude with which he could endure pain, in proof of which he would often thrust pins and needles into his flesh. His nervous sensibilities really seem to have been less acute than those of ordinary people, for his method of treating the cuts and sores that were the consequences of his barefooted wanderings through briers and thorns was to sear the wound with a red hot iron, and then cure the burn. During the War of 1812, when the frontier settlers were tortured and slaughtered by the savage allies of Great Britain, Johnny Appleseed continued his wanderings, and was never harmed by the roving bands of hostile Indians.
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During the succeeding nine years he pursued his eccentric avocation on the western border of Ohio and in Indiana. In the summer of 1847, when his labors had literally borne fruit over a hundred thousand square miles of territory, at the close of a warm day, after traveling twenty miles, he entered the house of a settler in Allen County, Indiana, and was as usual, warmly welcomed. He declined to eat with the family, but accepted some bread and milk, which he partook of sitting on the door-step and gazing on the setting sun. Later in the evening he delivered his “news right fresh from heaven” by reading the Beatitudes. Declining other accommodation, he slept, as usual, on the floor, and in the early morning he was found with his features all aglow with a supernal light and his body so near death that his tongue refused its office. The physician, who was hastily summoned, pronounced him dying, but added that he had never seen a man in so placid a state at the approach of death. At seventy-two years of age, forty-six of which had been devoted to his self-imposed mission, he ripened into death as naturally and beautifully as the seeds of his own planting had grown into fibre and bud and blossom and the matured fruit.
Source: Haley, W. D. “Johnny Appleseed: A Pioneer Hero.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine XLIII (November 1871): 830–836. Available online at The Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/harpersnew43various.