Who Was Johnny Appleseed?
Johnny Appleseed was the name given to a pioneer named John Chapman. During the early 1800s, Chapman settled along the Ohio River. He was a mixture of nurseryman and herb doctor. Chapman sold apple seeds and sprouts of apple trees throughout Northern and Central Ohio. As payment, Chapman accepted any amount of money or any objec
His real name was Jonathan Chapman, and he was born in Boston, in 1775. He had followed the Revolutionary veterans over the Alleghenies, and conceiving his life mission to be the planting of apple trees, as theirs was the wielding of the ax or the guiding of the plow, he served a great and useful purpose in making men and women contented in their new homes on the frontier. No one knows just where his body is buried, but no one doubts that it is somewhere in the woods he loved, where the birds sing and the squirrels play, and where the breezes of spring waft the sweet odors of blossoming branches. There is an old poem that some children still learn, one verse of which runs: And if they inquire whence came such trees, Where not a bough once swayed in the breeze, The reply still comes as they travel on, “Those trees were planted by Appleseed John.
The perfect biography to “bite into” at the start of a new school year! Children are sure to be fascinated by the eccentric and legendary Johnny Appleseed, a man who is best known for bringing apple trees to the midwest. Over John Chapman’s lifetime, he saw the country grow and start to spread westward. Traveling alone- in bare feet and sporting a pot on his head!-Johnny left his own special mark planting orchards that helped nourish new communities. His journeys and adventures are illustrated in a hundred black-and-white illustrations.
