Ohio History Journal

REPORTS

 

THE BURIAL PLACE OF JOHN CHAPMAN

(JOHNNY APPLESEED)*

 

Report of the Commission Appointed by the American

Pomological Society to Investigate Its Location

 

Much has been published and more said and written regard-

ing the life and work of John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed),

the pioneer collector and planter of apple seeds and the distributor

of seedling apple trees in western New York and Pennsylvania

and throughout the Ohio Valley, northern Ohio, and Indiana and

southwestern Michigan. While a considerable part of the pub-

lished matter regarding him is obviously fictional rather than ac-

curately historical, the general character and economic importance

of his life and work are well established.

Four other states have been credited with his birth, but it is

now definitely known that he was born at Leominster, Massa-

chusetts, September 26, 1774, the second child of Nathaniel Chap-

man (later a Revolutionary War veteran) and his wife, Elizabeth

Simons, daughter of James and Anna Simons of Leominster.

Although the numerous published accounts of his life vary greatly

and are contradictory in many respects, it appears to be well

established that his death occurred in a cabin in Allen County,

near Fort Wayne, Indiana, close to the St. Joseph River about

three miles above its confluence with the St. Mary's River where

it forms the Maumee River. The time of his death has been

variously stated and published as during the month of March in

1843, 1845, 1846 and 1847. The earliest published record of his

death appears to have been in the Weekly Fort Wayne Sentinel of

 

* Presented at the annual meeting of the American Pomological Society at

Quincy, Illinois, December 14, 1942.

(181)

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182   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Saturday, March 22, 1845, where his death is stated to have oc-

curred on the previous Tuesday. If correct, this would be March

18, 1845, but neither date nor place of burial is mentioned.

Richard Worth, under date of March 17, 1845, assigned his fu-

neral account over to Jesse Coles, as recorded in the John Chap-

man Estate papers.

For a quarter of a century following his death there appears

to have been little public interest in, or publicity regarding, the

events of his declining years, until a well-written and illustrated

article, "Johnny Appleseed, A Pioneer Hero," by W. D. Haley,

appeared in Harper's New Monthly Magazine for November,

1871. This made no reference to the exact date or place of death

or of interment except in the words, "Now no man knoweth the

place of his sepulchre."

An obviously hastily prepared letter from J. W. Dawson,

dated Spy Run Avenue (Fort Wayne), October 20, 1871, evi-

dently written after he had read the Haley article in November

Harper's (which had corrected certain factual errors, but un-

fortunately introduced others), appeared in the Fort Wayne Sen-

tinel for October 21 and 23, 1871. The Haley article and Dawson

letter appear to have been the sources from which later writers

drew much of their material, several of them adding further

details and such embellishments as the imagination of each pro-

duced, with the result that numerous confusing factual errors

crept into their accounts of Johnny's later years, death and

burial.

Contradictory statements regarding the time of his death

and especially regarding the location of his grave developed in

Fort Wayne in connection with the discussion of "a better and

more fitting marking of the grave." Because of this, a "Johnny

Appleseed Memorial Commission" consisting of four members

was appointed by the Common Council of the City of Fort

Wayne, August 14, 1934. The Commission, after considering

both oral and written evidence that had been submitted, reported

as follows on December 27, 1934: "The members of the Commis-

sion do not recommend a change in the accepted location of the

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BURIAL PLACE OF JOHN CHAPMAN              183

 

grave  of Johnny Appleseed."   This evidently referred to the

Archer Cemetery which Dawson had named as the place of

burial. The accuracy of this report having been questioned by

Mr. W. S. Roebuck and other citizens interested in the matter,

the American Pomological Society was appealed to by the Three

Rivers Forum of Fort Wayne. Then the Indiana Horticultural

Society, by a resolution adopted on January 12, 1935, asked the

Pomological Society to make a disinterested and thorough inves-

tigation to determine, if possible, the exact place of his burial.

This Commission, after visiting the locality, listening to the

sworn testimony of numerous witnesses, conducting considerable

correspondence and studying more than 200 pages of typewritten

manuscript reporting the results of intensive research done by

Mr. Roebuck and associates on the matter during several years

past, has reached the following conclusions:

1. That from sometime in the early thirties of the nine-

teenth century until his death (March 11 to 18), 1845, John

Chapman's part-time Indiana home was a cabin near the Old

Indian Trail in St. Joseph Township, Allen County, Indiana, near

the east bank of the St. Joseph River, about three miles above its

confluence with the St. Mary's River where it forms the Maumee

River at the City of Fort Wayne. The nearest neighbor dwell-

ings were the cabin of Richard Worth and his son, William

Worth, and the cabin of David Worth, probably a son of Richard

Worth, located near a spring which still flows there. All three

of these cabins were located on land in Section 19, T3N, R13E,

east of the St. Joseph River, then owned by a non-resident, Henry

Cassel, of Harrison, Preble County, Ohio, who secured it from

the government October 24, 1831. They were, therefore, in the

status of squatters' cabins such as were common in the region at

that time. The Cassel tract fronted on the east side of the St.

Joseph River and extended eastward to the St. Joseph State

Road; this road was surveyed in 1834 and, in 1835, was made a

state road to the north line of Allen County and opened.

The land records of Allen County and the Chapman Estate

papers show, however, that John Chapman owned a tract on the

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184   OHIO ARCHEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

north bank of the Maumee River in Milan Township upon which,

at the time of his death, there was a nursery containing 15,000

apple trees which were appraised as a part of his estate by John

Nuttle, April 4, 1845, for John Harold, the special estate admin-

istrator. This was merely one of a considerable number of nur-

sery tracts owned or held by John Chapman under lease in sev-

eral Ohio and Indiana counties at the time of his death. On one

of these places, in Jay County, Indiana, patented to him by the

government, May 20, 1837, and about three miles from the home

of his half-sister, Mrs. Persis Broom, in Wabash Township, he

had a 2,000 tree nursery and had had a log cabin built, timber cut

and dressed for a barn, and eleven acres of land cleared and

fenced. This suggests the possibility that he intended to make

his home there.

2. Though there have been several conflicting statements

at various times regarding the exact location of his death and

burial, the best authenticated evidence indicates that he became

ill in his cabin home early in March, 1845, and was removed to

the nearby cabin home of Richard Worth, where he died, between

March 11 and 18, 1845. He was buried on the same land on

which he died, in a walnut coffin made in the woodworking shop

in the sawmill of Christian Parker, a nearby neighbor who lived

on his own 160-acre farm (the SW 1/4 of Section 20) abutting the

Cassel tract on the southeast.

The available evidence indicates that in March, 1845, there

were at least three small burial plots in use not far from the cabin

home of John Chapman. The nearest one was that on the Cassel

tract, owned since 1902 by Wesley S. and Lizzie Roebuck. This

was where Chapman's cabin home and those of the Worths were

located, along with the farm home of Christian Parker (in whose

shop the coffin was made) not far away. This was in St. Joseph

Township, east of the St. Joseph River, but west of the St. Joseph

State Road which bounded the Cassel tract on the east.

Another burial plot, also on the east side of the river, was

located farther north and known as the Notestine Cemetery, and

still exists.

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BURIAL PLACE OF JOHN CHAPMAN              185

 

Tile third, located farther south and west of the river in

Washington Township, on the Archer-Rudisill farm, which has

now long been known as the Archer Cemetery, was stated by

Dawson to be the place of interment. Evidently this was based

largely on statements which Dawson credited to Samuel Fletter.

Fletter, according to Dawson, made the coffin, laid out the body

and buried it in the Archer Cemetery, though he mislocated the

house of William Worth, the stated place of death, as west of the

river.

The Archer burial place was located on a knoll on the David

Archer, Sr., farm on Section 25, in Washington Township, it

fronting on the west side of the Wabash and Erie Feeder Canal

(this canal parallels the St. Joseph River on the west). Charles

Archer, a grandson of David Archer, Sr., stated in 1934 that

when his grandfather sold the farm to Emanuel Rudisill in 1825

he reserved the three-acre family burying ground. The real estate

records of the county show, however, that this 98-acre tract was

deeded by David Archer, Sr., to Emanuel Rudisill July 16, 1843,

with no reservation of or reference to a burial plot. The burial

plot continued in use, however, and has long been known as the

Archer Cemetery.   Dawson stated (in 1871) that Chapman's

death occurred "on the 11th of March, 1845, at the house of Wil-

liam Worth, in St. Joseph Township, Allen County, Indiana, on

the land now owned by Jesse Cole, on the Feeder Canal, and was

buried in a reasonable time thereafter, at the family burying

ground set apart by David Archer deceased, now owned by Mr.

Emanuel Rudisill."

Aside from Dawson's statement, which has been accepted by

most subsequent writers, no evidence that either Chapman or any

of the Worths at any time lived west of the St. Joseph River has

come to our attention. In this connection it should be noted that

William D. Zimmerman, a veteran local nurseryman, in a wit-

nessed statement on September 3, 1934, said that about 27 years

earlier, Jacob Rudisill, who inherited the farm from his father,

was born and spent his entire life there, had told Zimmerman in

response to his question as to the burial place of Chapman, that

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186   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

he, Rudisill, disclaimed any knowledge as to whether it was on the

east side or west side of the river.

3. Careful study has been made by this Commission, of the

statements in the Dawson letter (October 20, 1971), which he

stated were "in general confirmed by the papers on file in the

Probate Court, where his estate was eleven years in being 'gobbled

up' from April, 1845, till the summer of 1856," and also of the

personal testimony and notarized statements of Eben Miles Chap-

man, great nephew of John Chapman (dated October 23, 1934),

and of Eleanor Parker Ayers, niece (September 14, 1934), and

James Ayers, nephew of Christian Parker (September 3, 1934),

and the witnessed statement of J. M. Stouder (May 29, 1932).

These statements appear to establish beyond question the fact of

the existence of the burial plot on the Cassel-Roebuck farm in

1845, and the substantially unanimous understanding in the St.

Joseph Township community east of the river that Johnny Apple-

seed was buried therein. Eben Miles Chapman, born in 1858,

great nephew of John Chapman, described in considerable detail

a visit there with his father and Uncle Timothy during his boy-

hood when his father and uncle showed him the grave of his

Great Uncle Johnny Appleseed, and they cut down the weeds

around it with their jackknives. At one time his father and

Uncle Timothy had cut poles with their axes and built a three-

pole fence around the grave. His Uncle Timothy told him that

he attended Uncle Johnny's funeral and that he was the only

relative present. Eleanor Parker Ayers described in convincing

detail a visit to the grave of Johnny Appleseed made when she was

a little girl, in company with her father, Jacob L. Parker, and her

uncle, Christian Parker, and she identified the location as a little

burial ground on the Cassel-Roebuck farm.

Apparently Dawson, when he wrote in 1871, had knowledge

of the existence of the Archer-Rudisill burial plot in Washington

Township on the west side of the river and had consulted Samuel

C. Fletter only. Apparently, also, he was either unaware of the

then long-existing burial plot on the Cassel-Parker-Roebuck farm

in Section 19 of St. Joseph Township on the east side of the river

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BURIAL PLACE OF JOHN CHAPMAN                187

 

and had failed to consult the Chapman kinsfolk and Parker de-

scendants, or he had not correctly interpreted the Chapman Estate

papers on file in the County Clerk's office in Fort Wayne.

4. No actual record of interment has been discovered or is

believed to exist. Such excavations as have been made on the

Cassel-Roebuck site and reported probings of the asserted grave

site in the Archer Cemetery have failed to disclose physical evi-

dence of human remains at either place. Careful study of all the

evidence brought to our attention convinces your Commission

that the interment occurred in the then existing burial plot on the

Cassel-Roebuck land which was long since abandoned and obliter-

ated by the extensive grading operations known to have been done

there. This is convincingly established by the authoritative state-

ments of the nearest Chapman kinsfolk descendants and of the

Parker descendants and the widespread belief in the St. Joseph

Township community east of the river to this effect. Had any

reason existed for interment in the Archer Cemetery the known

heavily flooded condition of the St. Joseph River at the time of

the death and burial of Chapman would have necessitated a round

trip of 16 to 18 miles over impassably muddy roads on the west

side of the river. This, however, does not appear to have been

the case.

MEMBERS OF THE COMMISSION:

B. S. PICKETT

WENDELL PADDOCK

WILLIAM A. TAYLOR

 

* W. S. Roebuck's "Outline of Facts Related to the Burial Place of John Chap-

man," and a map showing the geographic relationship of the Archer Rudisill and

Cassel-Roebuck burial plots as they existed in 1845, will be published in the next issue

of the Quarterly.

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