Many of the mythical heroes of American folklore are rugged men known for their strength and fighting skills. The axe-wielder Paul Bunyan, tornado tamer Pecos Bill, and Indian fighter Daniel Boone were strong and wily men of the frontier, who wrestled bears, felled virgin forests or fought Indians. One American hero of the frontier stands in stark contrast to these brawny legends. Johnny Appleseed, the prodigious planter of apple orchards throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and what is now West Virginia. A clever entrepreneur and lover of the wild, Johnny Appleseed managed to profit off of frontier expansion beyond the Alleghenies, but he also fashioned for himself a humble, gentle, free and nomadic way of walking lightly upon the land and in harmony with his fellow creatures.
Born John Chapman on September 26, 1774 in Leominster, Massachusetts, Johnny Appleseed later relocated to Pennsylvania with his father, mother and ten siblings. At age 22 (or possibly 18), he left his overcrowded, poverty-stricken home to seek a new life in the wilderness beyond the Allegheny Mountains. The promise of cheap land likely drew Chapman westward, but soon after experiencing the vastness and freedom of the American wilderness, Chapman renounced many of his civilized ways. He went barefoot, let his hair and beard grow long, dressed in rags, and slept under the stars. He made sauntering in the wilderness and planting feral apple orchards his vocation.
Chapman was alive during the early western expansionist land grabs following the Revolutionary War. Land was cheap in the west, but life was hard there, so Congress passed legislation to encourage land settlement and to discourage speculators from buying and flipping real estate for a quick profit. To discourage flipping, Congress required that purchasers of frontier land “improve” the land within two years. Most often improvements took the form of establishing an orchard.
Chapman had a keen sense of where people would settle next. He would acquire land ahead of their projected path and plant orchards there. Then within a year or two, when people settled in the vicinity of his land, Chapman would sell it to the newly-arrived settlers. In the winter, Chapman would return to Pennsylvania to obtain apple seeds from the pulpy refuse at apple cider presses. In the spring, he would return to the western wilderness to clear small plots of land, plant apple seeds, and build brush fences around the orchards to protect them from wild creatures.
Chapman’s business plan could have made him quite a wealthy man. Apples were in big demand on the frontier. Fresh apples in the summer and dried apples in the winter were an important source of nutrition. More importantly, apples were used to make hard cider and apple jack, a staple on the hard frontier. In spite of his promising entrepreneurial enterprise, Chapman showed no interest in building wealth. He kept poor records, often did not record deeds to his property or pay his land taxes, and he sometimes completely abandoned land he purchased. When Chapman did make money, he often gave it away to those in need. Furthermore, Chapman did not cultivate his orchards through grafting, which is necessary to develop delicious, juicy apples for eating. He planted from seed, which produces apples that are small and tough, the kind used for hard cider, vinegar and apple jack. Chapman believed that apple trees felt the pain of grafting, so he refused to practice this “evil” form of improving his stock.
The religious writings of Emmanuel Swedenborg led Chapman to adopt a nonviolent and ascetic lifestyle. Swedenborg, an eighteenth century scientist and Christian mystic, taught that a peaceful and simple life on earth guaranteed comforts in the afterlife. Chapman was convinced by Swedenborg’s theology that grafting trees and mistreating animals were evil acts. Chapman eventually adopted a vegetarian diet. On one occasion he purchased a horse from an owner who was mistreating the horse and then set the horse to pasture on his own land, later giving the horse to a man who promised to treat it humanely. Chapman also remained celibate and claimed to have a vision that his celibacy would be repaid with two wives in the afterlife. Wherever Chapman traveled, planting his orchards, he took with him Swedenborgian tracts, encouraging others to pursue the simple and gentle life.
Chapman became legendary and mythical in his own lifetime. He gained a reputation as a kind, adventurous, eccentric and feral man of the western wilderness. He was a skilled saunterer with leather-like calloused feet. With his long hair, unkempt beard, piercing eyes, asceticism and passion for the wild, Johnny Appleseed was someone that you never forgot having met.
Johnny Appleseed died at age 70 north of Fort Wayne, Indiana in March 1845, reportedly of the “Winter plague.” His longevity is a testament to the amenableness of a life as feral saunterer, especially when the average life span was 40 years old. Had he not discarded and given away so much of his wealth, Johnny Appleseed would have amassed a fortune. Instead, upon his death he owned a gray mare and land with an orchard of 2,000 apple trees. Much of the land was sold to pay back taxes, leaving Chapman’s estate with $9,000 in today’s money.
Like all of us who find ourselves enveloped by the violence of civilization, John Chapman had to negotiate his own path to freedom and sanity. He undeniably clung to some of the hostile and destructive ways of civilization, either out of ugly conditioning or out of the need to survive. Chapman also managed to develop and live a philosophy that smartly eschewed the empty customs of society, showed kindness for fellow humans and all creatures alike, and achieved both physical and spiritual freedom from the civilization apparatus that would crush the wilderness spirit in America within only a few decades.
Here are two short, helpful audio discussions about the life of Johnny Appleseed:
NPR “All Things Considered”: Johnny Appleseed Planted Stories of Myth, Adventure
Stuff You Missed in History Class: The Life of Johnny Appleseed