The Johnny Appleseed Trail Association has unveiled a new installation in Lancaster to honor its namesake. But it turns out the legend is only half the story. WGBH's Morning Edition Host Joe Mathieu spoke with local historian Anthony Sammacro about the real story of Johnny Appleseed. The transcript below has been edited for clarity.
Joe Mathieu: Johnny Appleseed was born John Chapman in 1774. After that things get a bit murky in the story.
Anthony Sammarco: Well, it's surprising. He actually has local connections. He was born and raised in Leominster, Massachusetts. And throughout that period of the late 18th [and] early 19th century, he was truly a nursery man. Everyone calls Johnny Appleseed the man who scattered seeds of apple trees everywhere in the world, but the whole concept was he was truly a nursery man. And when he moved west, he began to cultivate apple orchards.
Mathieu: I have read that these apples were not necessarily for eating, they for making cider?
Sammarco: Exactly. And one of the concepts is, water itself was not thought as healthy as it is today. But in the early part of the 19th century, these apples were used for pressing to make not only refreshing cider, but also a potent libation, which was hard cider. And it was something that was not only enjoyable, but it was also something in a lot of ways that was a mainstay of the west.
Mathieu: So he became a pretty popular guy, I'm guessing.
Sammarco: I think he was very popular. But the surprising thing was that he didn't just scatter half eaten apples throughout the west. What he did was cultivate land. And there was an unwritten rule that if you actually created a nursery orchard, you could actually claim that land. And it was said that in the early part of the 19th century that he owned over 1,200 acres of land in the area of Kentucky, Ohio and Illinois. And what he did was not just scatter the seed, but he created fencing. [And he] not only cultivated the trees, but he would return to these areas on an annual basis, and he would actually make sure the trees were growing. So in some ways he was not an itinerant man. He actually was a man of property and means.
Mathieu: Johnny Appleseed — John Chapman, of course — [is] the official folk hero of Massachusetts.
Sammarco: He is. I think sometimes many of us realize the stories that we heard as children are sometimes really quite fascinating, but it's not the whole story. I always remember Johnny Appleseed as a child. And, of course, when I went to school there was a store called Johnny Appleseed's in Beverly. I would pass by it on the way from town, and I would think to myself, "Wow, that's really fascinating." But it's a story in some ways like Uncle Sam — another man who actually had local connections. But it was something that really did create a very important part of our development of historical aspects to the United States.
Mathieu: Are any of these orchards still around?
Sammarco: No, I wouldn't think the orchard survived, but I think one of the things is that he actually had lived in an area of Leominster that has a street named Johnny Appleseed Way.
