JOHNNY APPLESEED
(excerpts from posts)
(If you want to retell any of the stories listed below, be sure to obtain permission from the copyright holder if the material is not in the public domain)

1) I attended a puppet show friday in which the storyteller, Katie Adams of Tampa, FL used a quilt (as a backdrop)to tell Johnny Appleseed stories. She used the nine squares to depict different aspects of stories about Johnny. She also used whirly gigs and other puppets in her show. I really liked how she put everything together. Its always interesting to see other's creative ideas. Her most interesting idea for me, which she quickly showed that evening at a workshop: a walkman recorder (flat) that she had velcor(ed) into a pocket of her dress. She could just reach into her pocket and turn her music on. I'm still working on how she had it all hooked up. Her dress was made to give her plenty of room for wires in the back. I enjoyed her performance, but still personally, I'm "just" a storyteller.

2) For a very interesting and not well known aspect of Johhny Appleseed read The Botany of Desire. Johhny was planting trees from seed. Apple seeds don't grow true to form. Each seed is unique. You can't grow orchards of eating fruit from seeds... the orchards that sprung up from Johhny's seeds were used as cider apples...mostly hard cider and applejack. The Botanty of Desire. 4 desires/4 plants. Apples/seetness Marijuana/intoxication/Tulip/Beauty Potato/control (very scary genetic engineering!)

3) Don't forget that Johnny was planting seeds from apples that were not grafted as most of today's apples are. Today's apples do not grow true because they tend to revert back to the root variety. I suspect from all I read that what is now called "heritage" apples or old variety apples may grow true. Not sure, but I suspect it was not as much a problem then as now. There is the Johnny Appleseed Museum in Urbana - one of the towns I go to for work.

3) Looked at several sites - and of course, many were on Johnny Appleseed the legend, but some were on the real man, John Chapman. At this site: http://www.nwta.com/Spy/winter00/johnny.html and a few of the others, it was mentioned that "... The laws of the day required each pioneer family to plant 50 apple trees during their the first year of homesteading." As well, John did own nurseries where the saplings were grown. Re: seeds vs grafting, Mark Tully who wrote the article said, "...Even in those early days, grafting was the most common way of propagating apple trees, but Johnny felt that cutting into a tree was cruel, so preferred to plant seeds." Seems as if John Chapman is as interesting as Johnny Appleseed - and the truth seems to vary on both of them.}

4) Apparantly grafting goes all the way back to Roman times. Heirloom's are the same as others...this was a revelation to me... the only way to insure your next generation of apples come true is by grafting. 5 seeds from the same apple can yield 5 trees with very different characteristics... just like our kids.

Check out Botany of Desire.... absolutely one of the best books I've read in twenty years.

5) This thing about seeds not producing good apples has always puzzled me. I have grafted trees before and I have bought grafted trees, which most all of them are anymore, actually. Many of these grafts are onto crabapple stock or other hardy stock of the apple family. I won't pretend to be expert on this, and I've forgotten a lot of what I once knew, but this much I do remember about grafting. (I remember well a pretty pink rose I had that died back in the winter, and next year it grew back--as a blackberry! Darn thing is still in my flowerbed.)

But here on our farm, the trees that come up from seed produce good apples. I have a tree in my yard that grew from a seed thrown under the porch. It produces bushels of yellow apples so sweet the applesauce doesn't need any sugar added. We have trees scattered all over our land that produce wonderfully flavored apples.

No, they are probably not true to variety, but they are very good to eat or to cook. So those seeds Johnny Appleseed planted probably did produce some good fruit. They might not have been recognizable as Yorks or Macintoshes or Winesaps or other familiar varieties, but certainly they were well worth harvesting and eating.

As for cider, people used the drops, leftovers, small apples, etc for that. Nothing was wasted. They would also take the pulp from the cider-making, add some water and let that ferment to make vinegar. And of course, cider that goes past the hard stage becomes vinegar too. We've made cider and vinegar, as well as apple butter, applesauce, pie apples, apple jam--you name it. Apples were such a multi-purpose fruit they were probably extremely valuable to settlers for all the many food items that could be made with them.

So Johnny Appleseed with his sack of seeds was probably a welcome figure, and no wonder his legend was passed on.

6) From Botany of Desire
.....Every seed in (an ) apple, not no mention every seed riding down the Ohio alongside JOhn Chapman, contains the genetic instructions for a completely new and different apple tree, one that, if planted, would bear only the most glancing resemblance to its parents. If not for grafting-the ancient technique of cloning trees-every apple in the world would be its own distinct variety, and it would be impossible to keep a good one going beyond the life span of that particular tree. In the case of the apple, the fruit nearly always falls far from the tree.

The botanical term for this variability is heterozygosity,...... and in the apple it is extreme.... Wherever the apple tree goes, its offspring propose so many different variations on what it means to be an apple-at least five per apple, several thousand per tree-that a couple of these novelties are almost bound to have whatever qualities it takes to prosper in the tree's adopted home.

Apples were precious on the frontier, and Chapman could be sure of a strong demand for his seedlings, even if most of the would yield nothing but spitter. He was selling, cheaply, something everybody wanted-something, in fact, everybody in Ohio needed by law. A land grant in the Northwest Territory specifically required a settler to "set out at least fifty apple or pear tree' as a condition of his deed.....the purpose of the rule was to dampen real estate speculation by encouraging homesteaders to put down roots. "

Pollan goes on (at length ) to talk about the desire for sweetness... the fact that cane sugar was associated with the slave trade, and that the apple was one of the few natural sweet foods available

Also..."Up until Prohibition, an apple grown in America was far lesslikely to be eaten than to wind up in a barrel of cider. ...Corn liquor, or "white lightning," preceded cider on the frontier by a few years, but after the apple trees began to bear fruit, cider-being safer, tastier and much easier to make became the alcoholic drink of choice. Just about the only reason to plant an orchard of the sort of seedling apples JOhn Chapman had for sale would have been its intoxicating harvest of drink, available to anyone with a press and a barrel.

....It wasn't until this century that the apple acquired its reputation for wholesomeness-"An apple a day was a marketing slogan dreamed up by growers concerned that temperance would cut into sales.....

And on and on... totally fascinating... very interesting stuff about John Chapman's Swedborgian philosophy, brilliant woodsmanship, his use of healing herbs...Pollan describes him as an Dionysus' American son.........

7) You may or may not know that I present a program called "Sarah Farley Remembers Johnny Appleseed." It is the culmination of years of study about Chapman. I asked Joe Besecker, of the Johnny Appleseed Society, Urbana University, about BOTANY OF PASSION, and here is what he had to say:
"Botany of Desire in my opinion is totally wrong on the Johnny Appleseed section. All reproduction that involves fertilization the offspring are different, including humans. Settlers needed apple seedlings to establish permanency. Also, the cider and vinegar were important to the settlers. Pollen is way off base saying Johnny's intention was to provide alcohol to get the settlers drunk."

8) I was reading about Johnny Appleseed to my 7 year old daughter when this fact popped up. In school they taught us that he loved apples, as a homeschooler I found out the truth and began laughing. My daughter didn't get the joke put she did learn that our Mr. Appleseed liked to drink rather than eat apples. We made apple sauce from 9 different apples that day and tried each apple before we cooked them up. I told her to make apple cider like Johnny wanted took too long.

9) I tell a version of Johnny Appleseed based on a few other little known or little talked about "Facts". Johnny also went around planting Dog Fennell. (you can find a reference to this is B. A Botkins American Folklore.) He got his plants mixed up and thought it would cure malaria or some other ailment. At any rate it has no medicinal properties and really only one distinct property. It stinks. It is often called stinkweed! So I tell the story of what would have happened had he been known as Johnny Stinkweed. He is portrayed as a little goofy and not all that bright. Unaware that the settlers hate that stinkweed stuff. In my version he ends up given a choice to change his life, a choice between a sack of appleseeds, or a case of walnuts. Eventually he choses the walnuts and declares himself Johnny Nutcase! Of course he ends up as Johnny Appleseed eventually... It's a fun story and one of my favorites to tell, it goes over great with kids age 9-14 but doesn't sit well with adults. I usually share the truth behind the story. But, they just don't like when you mock a legend! So it is my favorite story I wrote which I seldom tell. I wonder do we all have these?

10) As Sarah Farley, I also tell about Johnny's advocacy of dog fennel, a.k.a. mayweed. According to Peterson Field Guides' Eastern/Central Medicinal Plants and Herbs, dog fennel, a bad-smelling annual, was indeed effective to some degree in treating fevers, colds, diarrhea, dropsy, rheumatism, obstructed menses, and headaches. The leaves can be rubbed on insect stings. It also works as an astringent and a diuretic, and it induces sweating (as in to break a fever) and vomiting. Some experience an allergy to the plant when used topically or internally. I suppose that he could have been called "Johnny Hoarhound Seed," "Johnny Pennyroyal Seed," "Johnny Catnip Seed," "Johnny Mullein Seed," and "Johnny Rattlesnake Root," also, since he planted those and others liberally.

11) Dog fennel is also used often when folks get into nettles - they hurt terribly and dog fennel will stop the stinging.

12) A couple of thoughts on the much bad-mouthed Johnny Appleseed. As I mentioned, he spent a lot of time in areas I work in daily. There are still orchards with stock descended from those trees. He got his seed from cider presses and planted seeds and offered them freely to folks who wanted them. Several things are important, however. As Granny Sue so rightly pointed out, the apple was not used back them as it is today. Most on this list probably only eat apples fresh. You probably do not even fry apples, much less preserve them in any way.

Fresh apples to eat were nice treats back then, but a small part of the things apples were used for - as she mentioned - jelly, apple sauce, dried apples (for fried pies - yum), apple butter, fried apples, apples stored underground in root cellars, vinegar and cider...and yes, hard cider and apple jack.

Remember a fruit that was stable as it was preserved was important - peaches and pears were not as versatile not as hardy in the cold Ohio winters. I don't know if you can dry either and you sure can't make cider or vinegar easily from them.

Secondly, folks who traveled into Ohio and elsewhere might have very little space for things - a bag of apple seeds took a lot less room...AND way less care than grafted root stock.

Third, these folks were homesteading. They didn't care how long it might take for a tree to bear fruit. They were planting for generations. We on the other hand tend to think very short term. The gnarly, hard apples mentioned tend to keep pretty well in a root cellar. The big meaty red delicious and other modern apples probably would rot in the same situation.

About the hard cider/apple jack - two different things. Hard cider was very short lived before it turned to vinegar. These folks probably didn't have a lot of time to drink an' carry on if they wanted to survive. Drinkning a little hard ciderwas probably built around some of the social events that kept a community together. Apple Jack where I come from is cider with sugar and yeast added to make a stronger drink. Yeast and sugar were precious commodities for pioneer families.

As a Drug Rep, I can't pass on the medicinal uses. Alcoholic beverages were used for other things also - as an anesthetic, for sickness - folks still take whiskey and mix it with rock candy and sulfur in some parts to make cough syrup, it has been used for thousands of years to clean wounds. Last, but not least, alcohol was used extensively as trade goods. So, Johnny Appleseed was not some idiot who went through the wilderness giving away worthless seeds, but was trying to help settlers change the face of a wilderness.

Oh, Granny Sue mentioned the apple tree she has. My Grandma had 4 apple trees on Little Creek in Clay County. All the old stock Romeo like Johnny Appleseed planted. All planted from seed when she and my Grandpa first took up housekeeping. All bore fruit and were sweet little ol' gnarly apples. Ugly as teenage sin, smallish, but they made some awesome fried apple pies.

13) Johnny Appleseed was absolutely not some idiot....he was in fact considered to be a powerful medicine man by the Native Americans he encountered... Another reason he didn't like grafts is that he thought cutting into a tree to be a wicked act. His kindness to animals was legendary even in his own time.

More from Pollan
" In the process of changing the land, Chapman also changed the apple-or rather, made it possible for the apple to change itself. If Americans had planted only grafted trees-if Americans had eaten rather than drunk their apples-the apple would not have been able to remake itself and thereby adapt to its new home. It was the seeds, and the cider, that gave the apple the opportunity to discover by trial and error the precise combination of traits required to prosper in the New World. From Chapman's vast planting of nameless cider apple seeds came some of the great American cultivars of the nineteenth century.

Looked at from this angle, planting seeds instead of clones was an extraordinary act of faith in the American land, a vote in favor of the new and unpredictable as against the familiar and European. In this Chapman was making the pioneers' classic wager, betting on the fresh possibilities that might grow from seeds planted in the redemptive American ground. "

Chapman as a businessman....
"...he preferred to get out ahead of the settlers moving west, and this would become the pattern of his life: planting a nursery on a tract of wilderness he judged ripe for settlement and then waiting. By the time the settlers arrived, he'd have apples trees ready to see them. In time he would find a local boy to look after his trees, move on, and start the process all over again. By the 1830's JOhn Chapman was operating a chain of nurseries that reached all the way from western Pennsylvania through central Ohio and into Indiana. It was in Fort Wayne that Chapman died in 1845-wearing the infamous coffee sack, some way, yet leaving an estate that included some 1200 acres of prime real estate. the barefoot crank(no no... not my words!) died a wealthy man.

14) I am surely enjoying all this Appleseed lore, a lot of it new to me. I'm not sure about how long cider keeps. When we made it, we processed it and it kept as long as we wanted it to. We heated it to a boil, put into jars and sealed it up. Not the same as raw cider but it kept. Most of what I remember reading is that folks kept it in barrels. I wonder just how long it was cider before it became vinegar, or did they keep the apples and only grind the cider as they needed it? Wassail is made with cider, and they had it on hand at Christmas--of course, by then maybe it was hard and that accounts for all the wassail songs!

Actually, you can make cider from pears. We did a small amount every year, although it never lasted long enough to be processed. It was even better-tasting than the apple cider. Probably (guessing here) pears were not as hardy and plentiful as apples, and more susceptible to frost in the spring, so not as dependable a crop. You can also make vinegar from them, and from peaches. Any fruit that yields juice will yield vinegar, the question is the quality of the vinegar, its flavor, and whether this is a good use of the fruit. Peaches, being more tender and well-suited to making jam and for drying, would probably not be used to make vinegar. Although I've made vinegar (and wine) with the skins and bruised fruits. Pears are excellent for drying, and keep very well. I make pear jam, although old-timers seemed to favor pear marmalade instead of jam.

As for being small and knarly, our self-seeded apple trees are not all like that. Some are, but only because they are not cared for, just grow where they will, with no pruning or other care. The tree in the yard yields lovely yellow apples, great for eating, and the ones at the top of the tree are quite large. They tend to have a mildew on them, because we don't spray with all kinds of chemical stuff, and it washes right off.

15) I've heard that Johnny's main mission was preaching, not apples, and that he wore a cooking pot for a hat -- true?
Response: Yes, he wore a cooking pot or a "kettle" on his head. I believe it began with that being his method of carrying everything as he traveled from place to place.
Response: As a young man, Chapman became a follower of Swedenborg. Johnny called himself an "apple missionary" because of his work with apples, but he also carried with him a New Testament and tracts by Swedenborg. As he visited the various settlers on his circuit, he would leave sections of the Testament and pages from the tracts. Then, on his next round, he'd collect the former and leave new pages. Often, during his visits, the settlers would ask him to read aloud from the Bible. His voice was strong, according to first-hand testimony, and carried even to the corners of the lofts. He claimed to be a "primitive Christian" because of his simple life. As for the mush pot, he had to carry something to cook in, but it is highly unlikely that he wore it on his head. That would be very hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Reports say that he fashioned a high-peaked hat that had a sort of brim out front; he made it of pasteboard. He was about 5'9" tall, wiry of build, and full of energy. He seldom wore shoes, despite the weather. His clothes were usually out-sized, garments he had received in exchange for seedlings from folks who had no cash money to pay. While he never married, as a Swedenborgian, he believed that he would have multiple "angel wives" in Heaven.
Response: And when he died, he was buried quietly and his grave is not known today.
Response: How can this be? When I taught in Fort Wayne, I visited his grave. That was a long, long time ago and I still remember now impressed I was. Until then, I had thought that he was just some kind of mythical figure, not a real man. How about it, Jack's Mamma. Isn't Johnny buried there in Fort Wayne? Was I tricked? Say it ain't so.
Response: I have always heard he was buried near Fort Wayne in an unmarked grave and the location was unknown. He did die around Fort Wayne. I don't know. Was it a memorial or an actual grave? I haven't been to Fort Wayne to see. Most of my digging into Johnny has been in Urbana. What I heard may be myth. His grave was unmarked...I may have just taken that to mean unknown. Folks may have researched it and put a marker on it in later years.
Response: Here is the "dirt" on where Johnny Appleseed is buried!
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/6803587.htm
Seems the Johnny Appleseed park has a memorial but no Johnny! They still do not know where he is buried.
Response: It is, indeed, purported to be Johnny's gravesite. The story goes that Johnny was visiting friends in Fort Wayne when he heard that one of his orchards, in Ohio, I believe was threatened by harsh weather. He took off in that bad weather to care for the orchard, became very ill, and died soon after.
Response: Sorry to tell y'all, but I stopped and talked to folks in Urbana - the "grave" is only a memorial. No one is buried under the stone and no one knows for sure where Johnny is buried. That is definite, actual fact.

16) Following the Johnny Appleseed thread, here is a sad report of the threat to the UK apple:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/supermarkets/story/0,12784,1093353,00.html

(This web page updated 11/29/03)