ADDRESS AT THE GRAVE OF JOHNNY APPLESEED
By ROBERT
C. HARRIS
Here in the Archer graveyard at the
north edge of Fort
Wayne, Indiana, is the grave of Johnny
Appleseed whose real
name was John Chapman, born September
26, 1774, died March
18, 1845.
Johnny Appleseed won renown by a few
simple and helpful
acts:
1. He was a peacemaker between the Indians and white
settlers.
2. He was a missionary for the church of
New Jerusalem,
founded by Emanuel Swedenborg.
3. Perhaps the most important of all,
was his distribution of
apple trees to the early settlers. He
came to this locality
about the year of 1830 and spent the
most of the last 15
years of his life in and around Fort
Wayne.
He would secure permission to use a
small patch of ground
where he would plant apple seed. Later
he would return, give
some of the trees to the owner of the
ground and then distribute
the rest to other settlers.
Johnny Appleseed owned property of his
own. His estate
papers which are on file in the county
clerk's office in Fort Wayne,
Indiana, show that he owned four pieces
of real estate: forty
acres of land about 10 miles northwest
of Fort Wayne, forty-two
acres on the Maumee ten miles down the
river from Fort Wayne,
eighteen and one-half acres at Ox-Bow
Bend near the Ohio-
Indiana line, forty acres one-half mile
from the Indiana-Ohio line
on the Maumee. There was another 74
acres of land in Jay
County on the Wabash River one-half mile
west of the Indiana-
Ohio line. These properties were along
rivers, canals or main
highways.
The oldest account of Johnny Appleseed
is an article pub-
(45)