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)
46
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
lished in Manchester, England, by the
Swedenborg Church Janu-
ary 14, 1817:
There is in the western country a very
extraordinary missionary of
the New Jerusalem. A man has appeared
who seems to be almost inde-
pendent of corporal wants and
sufferings. He goes barefooted, can sleep
anywhere, in house or out of house, and
lives upon the coarsest and most
scanty fare. He has actually thawed the
ice with his bare feet.
He procures what books he can of the New
Church; travels into the
remote settlements, and lends them
wherever he can find readers, and some-
times divides a book into two or three
parts for more extensive distribution
and usefulness. This man for years past
has been in the employment of
bringing into cultivation, in numberless
places in the wilderness, small
patches (two or three acres) of ground,
and then sowing apple seeds and
rearing nurseries.
These become valuable as the settlements
approximate, and the profits
of the whole are intended for the
purpose of enabling him to print all the
writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, and
distribute them through the western
settlements of the United States.
This article gives a very definite and
logical reason for the
service of Johnny Appleseed.
Markers and memorials to the memory of
Johnny Appleseed
are located at: (1) Copus
Monument, Ashland Co., near Mifflin,
Ohio; (2) Mansfield, Ohio; (3) Ashland,
Ohio; (4) Swinney
Park, Fort Wayne, Indiana; (5) Apple
Trees, Thatcher Woods,
Chicago; (6) Springfield, Mass.; (7)
Leominster, Mass.; (8)
Jr. High School, Mansfield, Ohio; (9)
Apple tree planted by
Johnny Appleseed at Defiance, Ohio.
The iron fence which surrounds his grave
here was a gift of
Stephen Fleming of Fort Wayne. The
granite boulder at the head
of his grave was placed there by the
Optimist Club and James
Menefee of Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Johnny Appleseed played a very important
role in the settle-
ment of the Maumee Valley. What could be
more fitting to his
memory than to plant apple trees in our
roadside parks, and se-
lected places along our highways? These
trees would add to the
beauty and usefulness of our highways.
In the spring they would
supply beauty and fragrance, later shade
and finally apples in
season. This would be a living memorial
which I feel sure Johnny
Appleseed would approve.