Johnny Appleseed Festival

The tradition & historical record

John Chapman (September 26, 1774 – March 18, 1845), better known as Johnny Appleseed, was an American pioneer nurseryman who introduced trees grown with apple seeds (as opposed to trees grown with grafting) to large parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and the Canadian province of Ontario, as well as the northern counties of West Virginia. He became an American icon while still alive, due to his kind, generous ways, his leadership in conservation, and the symbolic importance that he attributed to apples. He was the inspiration for many museums and historical sites such as the Johnny Appleseed Museum in Urbana, Ohio, and today is recognized as an American folk hero. ¹

Chapman was born on September 26, 1774, in Leominster, Province of Massachusetts Bay, the second child of Nathaniel and Elizabeth Chapman (née Simonds, married February 8, 1770). His birthplace has a granite marker, and the street is now called Johnny Appleseed Lane. Chapman's mother Elizabeth died in 1776, shortly after giving birth to her second son Nathaniel Jr., who died a few days later. In 1780, his father Nathaniel returned to Longmeadow, Massachusetts where he married Lucy Cooley. Author Rosella Rice states, "Johnny had one sister, Persis Broom, of Indiana. She was not at all like him; a very ordinary woman, talkative, and free in her frequent, 'says she's' and 'says I's.'" According to some accounts, 18-year-old John persuaded his 11-year-old half-brother Nathaniel Cooley Chapman to go west with him in 1792. The duo apparently lived a nomadic life until their father brought his large family west in 1805 and met up with them in Ohio. Nathaniel decided to stay and help their father farm the land. Shortly after the brothers parted ways, John began his apprenticeship as an orchardist under a Mr. Crawford who grew apples, thus inspiring Chapman's life journey of planting apple trees. In 1800 at age 26, Chapman was in Licking River, Ohio. His first orchard was on the farm of Isaac Stadden in Licking County. In 1806, he embarked upon a canoe voyage down the Ohio, Muskingum, and Walhonding Rivers, using two canoes lashed together to transport himself and his seeds. ¹

There are stories of Johnny Appleseed practicing his nurseryman craft in the area of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and of picking seeds from the pomace at Potomac River cider mills in the late 1790s. Another story has Chapman living in Pittsburgh on Grant's Hill in 1794 at the time of the Whiskey Rebellion. The popular image is of Johnny Appleseed spreading apple seeds randomly everywhere he went. In fact, he planted nurseries rather than orchards, built fences around them to protect them from livestock and wildlife, left the nurseries in the care of a neighbor who sold trees on shares, and returned every year or two to tend the nursery. He planted his first nursery on the bank of Brokenstraw Creek, south of Warren, Pennsylvania. Next, he seems to have moved to Venango County, along the shore of French Creek, but many of these nurseries were in the Mohican River area of north-central Ohio. This area included the towns of Mansfield, Lisbon, Lucas, Perrysville and Loudonville. In 1817, a bulletin of the Church of New Jerusalem printed in Manchester, England was the first to publish a written report about Chapman. It described a missionary who traveled around the West to sow apple seeds and pass out books of The New Church. In 1819, Chapman was nearly killed in an accident in Ohio. One morning, he was picking his crops in a tree when he fell and caught his neck in the fork of the branches. Shortly after he fell, eight year-old John White found him struggling. ¹

Different dates are listed for his death. Harper's New Monthly Magazine of November 1871 was apparently incorrect in saying that he died in mid-1847, though this is taken by many as the primary source of information about John Chapman. Multiple Indiana newspapers reported his death date as March 18, 1845. The Goshen Democrat published a death notice for him in its March 27, 1845, edition, citing the day of death as March 18 of that year. The paper's death notice read: ¹

In Fort Wayne, on Tuesday, 18th, inst John Chapman, commonly known by the name of Johnny Appleseed, about 70 years of age. Many of our citizens will remember this eccentric individual, as he sauntered through town eating his dry rusk and cold meat, and freely conversing on the mysteries of his religious faith. He was a devoted follower of Emanuel Swedenborg, and notwithstanding his apparent poverty, was reputed to be in good circumstances. The Fort Wayne Sentinel printed his obituary on March 22, 1845, saying that he died on March 18: ¹

On the same day in this neighborhood, at an advanced age, Mr. John Chapman (better known as Johnny Appleseed). The deceased was well known through this region by his eccentricity, and the strange garb he usually wore. He followed the occupation of a nurseryman, and has been a regular visitor here upwards of 10 years. He was a native of Pennsylvania we understand but his home—if home he had—for some years past was in the neighborhood of Cleveland, where he has relatives living. He is supposed to have considerable property, yet denied himself almost the common necessities of life—not so much perhaps for avarice as from his peculiar notions on religious subjects. ¹

Johnny Appleseed left an estate of over 1,200 acres (490 ha) of valuable nurseries to his sister. He also owned four plots in Allen County, Indiana, including a nursery in Milan Township with 15,000 trees, and two plots in Mount Vernon, Ohio. He bought the southwest quarter (160 acres; 65 ha) of section 26, Mohican Township, Ashland County, Ohio, but did not record the deed and lost the property. The financial panic of 1837 took a toll on his estate. Trees brought only two or three cents each, as opposed to the "fippenny bit" (about six and a quarter cents) that he usually got. Some of his land was sold to pay taxes following his death, and litigation used up much of the rest. In 1880, abolitionist author Lydia Maria Child mythologized Appleseed in a poem: ¹

In 1921, 1923, 1927, and 1928, American song poet Vachel Lindsay published poems about Johnny Appleseed. One of these poems was the source text for Eunice Lea Kettering's prize-winning choral-orchestral composition Johnny Appleseed. Gail Kubik composed a work for bass, chorus and orchestra called In Praise of Johnny Appleseed; this work was also based on the eponymous Vachel Lindsay poem, and entered into the same 1942 National Federation of Music Clubs composition competition as Kettering's work. In 1933, poets Rosemary Carr Benét and Stephen Vincent Benét mythologized Appleseed in their children's poetry book A Book of Americans. In Disney's 1948 film Melody Time, Appleseed is featured in an animated musical segment titled "The Legend of Johnny Appleseed". The first recorded Johnny Appleseed Festival was held in 1968 in Lisbon, Ohio. ¹

Chapman planted his apples by seed, not grafting, but w… ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Johnny Appleseed”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

Johnny Appleseed Festival is recorded in open cultural data. The structured record cited below does not describe the practice, and this entry has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 1 external register, which can be verified through the citation. ²