June 16, 2026 • 52 mins
For a lot grade-school kids in the States, the story of Johnny Appleseed is a modern American myth. The story centers on a quixotic, wandering nomad that (for some reason) is cartoonishly centered on planting apple trees all throughout the newly-minted US. So... how much of this Americana is true? In today's episode, Ben, Max and Noel uncover the true story of an *extremely eccentric* guy named John Chapman, who did indeed make a living planting a ton of apple trees across the Midwest -- but not the kind of apples you're thinking of, and not for the reasons you might imagine. Spoiler, much later, the FBI gets involved.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our own
American piece of mythology. Our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
A real American hero.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Just so, that's mister Noel Brown.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
They call me Ben Bullen here for tax purposes.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
And uh, that's your government name.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
It's a government's name for a for you.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
You are assigned this name by a government at birth.
Where are you even from?
Speaker 4 (01:03):
Man?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
What's your deal? All right? Well, we all become myths
over time, right.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
In our own minds at least.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
So if you were a grade school kid in the US,
then you inevitably, sometime in your early years you hear
made up stories about folks like George Washington. You might
hear about folks like Pekos, Bill Paul Bunyan. Paul Bunyan
is a great winner, Daniel Boone, h Davy.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Crockett, David Hill. Rockett killed him a bar when he
was only three with his bare hands. Oh bar hands.
Speaker 5 (01:40):
Let's not talk about those amazing heroic stories you heard
about Richard Nixon.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Ah, Yes, Richard Nixon. He was sort of a pecos
story was English.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I think I think Richard Nixon was once a puppet
and then he told lies and his nose got big,
and then he became a real boy and then got ached.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I was gonna say he never quite became a real boy.
But we've got a we've got a character from this
American pantheon that's fascinated us for a while.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
You may know him by his street.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Name, Johnny apple Seed. The popular tale will hold that
this guy, like some demeter of old, traveled across the
United States on foot, planting apple trees. Yeah, barfoot and
(02:32):
planting apple trees, making a bit of mischief along the way.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
The thing is, whatever, the most wholesome act of terrorism
that ever took place.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
You get out of town with your apples and seeds
and ye trees.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
I'm gonna plant food and shade for everyone as.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
An active domestic It's like when it's like the how
the plot of Footloose, which you taught me, is apparently
all about a town that doesn't want people dancing, yea.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
And then Kevin Bacon comes in and shakes it all
up with his literally by shaking his hips and this.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Story of Johnny Appleseed has fascinated us for a bit.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Folks.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
You see, it's loosely based on real world events, but
it reminded me in the research for this, it reminded
me of our earlier conversations about what loosely based or
inspired by means. And we're going to posit to you
ridiculous historians that the actual story here is even more
(03:35):
ridiculous than the legend.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah, and it even has some crossover with our sister
show stuff they don't want you to know, which is
a bit of a twist that I'm not going to spoil,
but yeah, we'll get there. Most American kids, do, you know,
hear about Johnny Appleseed in school? You might have seen
a version of his story on one of those little
children's books with all the historical figures with the giant
heads you know on the front. Yeah, who was I
(03:59):
think is what they're called. Maybe I made that up,
but you know what I'm talking about. You've seen him
in that delightful little section of Barnes and Noble with
the stage and all the woodland creatures on the wall,
story Time in the app story Time in the Afternoon
with Johnny apples seed. He was in a way kind
of a proto hippie, but like he wasn't he was
(04:20):
good for something.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Yeah, yeah, think about this. It's classic Americano. We've got
a noble nomad on a exotic quest to spread produce,
specifically apples, throughout the still forming emergent United States. And
we know Britannica is a British source, but they're really
good for this one. So maybe we give you their
(04:44):
description of our boy John.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah. They described him as being cheerful and generous in nature,
with an affinity for the wilderness, a gentleness of spirit
that extended to the animal kingdom and all those aforementioned
woodland creatures. He was also super into Jesus, way into
m but not but you know what that's not about
(05:07):
at all. He also, in addition to his love of
the Bible, he also loved all of nature's great bounties
and h and had a working knowledge of medicinal herbs.
He also found quite an affinity with the native peoples
of this land, the Native Americans, which is not always
(05:28):
in line with what you think of as a typical
Christian in this in this day and age.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Oh yeah, that's a great point, Noel.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
He's sort of like a live and let live Christian.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Oh yeah, I could see that. He was known to
be the kind of guy who would hang out with anyone.
And above all, he's often described in terms of his
eccentric appearance. He had very long hair. He in place
of your typical tricorn hat or whatever, he wore an
(06:00):
inverted metal pan that he used as a hat, and
he used it to cook stuff. He was not a
fan of shoes. He was basically wearing cast off rags
for pants, and he had a coffee sack over his shoulders.
That's the part of the legend where he would have
holes cut out for arms and he would have a
(06:21):
bag of apple seeds. It's a fun, wholesome story.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah there, if I'm not mistaken. Like a lot of
these mythical creatures of American folklore, there is an old
Disney cartoon that personifies old Johnny Appleseed.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yeah, let's play a clip. This current image that grade
school kids in our country have about Johnny Appleseed comes
largely from a nineteen forty eight Disney film called Melody Time.
It depicts Johnny Appleseed in sort of Cinderella esque fashion.
(06:56):
He's surrounded by blue songbirds. He's got a jolly guardian angel.
We're gonna play a little clip right now, and a
stew pot for a hat and a stewpot for a hat.
So we're gonna play this clip. Here we go, bluebirds.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
The lard is good to me and religion.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
Yeah, the lard, yeah, because yeah, yeah, yeah, because of
you know, cooking a mushpan. So that's the Johnny Appleseeds
song voice like an angel, like a songbird himself.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
H you know, we did. We didn't use the term.
I think I may have said it over the song
and you might not have heard it. But the term
mushpan is a new one to me, and in looking
it up, it is typically referring to a fry pan uh,
devoted to making like corn meal or corn bread, you know,
sort of like a cast iron skillet. But I love
(07:57):
the term mushpan. That's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah it does again sound like a British insult.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Oh, Ben, I was right, and I know that you
already knew this. But the Johnny Appleseed cartoon is has
been released in an addition called American Legends Disney American legends.
That also includes a cartoon they did about Paul Bunyan
and about John Henry who was a steel driving man.
And there's one other little let's see the Brave Engineer.
(08:27):
Oh okay, about the exploits of legendary railroad engineer John
Luther Casey Jones. Casey Jones, ah okay at a slower speed.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
So we know that some grade schoolers of a certain age,
no offense to anybody, may have even dressed up like
Johnny Appleseed for class projects.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
But it is It is a costume you can make
with stuff laying around.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Yeah, all you need is in apple. But when you
are learning this myth, this folklore, these kids, you're you're
often gonna be missing out on the real story because
you see, fellow ridiculous historians, the character Johnny Appleseeed is
based on an actual person named John Chapman.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
John Chapman. The app is in there, it's contained within
the name. If it's not. If that's not nominated determinism,
I don't know what is. It's just one pee true.
It's true, lizar I agree, he got it.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
This guy is he's born before the United States is
a thing. It's September twenty sixth, seventeen seventy four. It's
a place called leo Minster. At the time, it is
a province of Massachusetts Bay because they still don't have
states yet.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Ben, speaking of Massachusetts Bay, have you been enjoying Widows Bay?
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Yes, yeah, I'm read up.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Are you up to date? Did you watch the most
recent one? I did? I did too. I just I
don't think we've talked about it on the show, but
it is a really really fun Stephen King esque series
on Apple TV. And there is an episode and it
think it's kind of a flashback to colonial times on
this cursed island. So there's you know, there's some ridiculous
(10:15):
history contained. There's a really creepy museum that has all this,
like cannibalism in the church. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
They also they also do from a writing perspective, they
do a wonderful job threading the line between.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Comedy and horror.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
One of the best examples I've ever seen.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
I thank you. I completely agree. I was going to
say something very I've been I've been saying something very
similar when I'm bragging about it. It just it is
genuinely scary at times, genuinely sweet and genuinely funny, and
the performances are all just phenomenal, and you never believe
that main guy as British as they come.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
And also, do check out if you're a fan of
what's his name, Matthew Ris. Yeah, okay, thank you. Do
check out the Americans. If you're a family he was
in there. They don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
I never okay, thank you, Ben, because i need something
fresh right now while I'm waiting for the next Widow's
beta drop, I'm going to check out the Americans.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Never so much of John Chapman's early years were lost
to history. We do know that he was the second
child of a couple called Nathaniel and Elizabeth Chapman. Unfortunately,
like so many families in this time, in this part
of the world, childbirth was a hard mortality threat, so
(11:34):
his mother passed away when he was very young, at
seventeen seventy six, so he's at most two years old.
She passes away after giving birth to a child, who
also passes away soon after, so John never really got
to meet that sibling. In seventeen eighty, probably due to
(11:57):
economic circumstances as much as to romance, his father, Nathaniel remarries.
This time he marries a lady named Lucy Cohley, and
Nathaniel and Coley go on to have ten more children.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yep, he sure did. And given given the aforementioned risk
of childbirth mortality, that seems like a risky move. Yeah,
in that DNA's but you know, it was also like
you know that there was there was no birth control.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Either, or cable or social media.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Anything to do much of anything. Yes, yeah, so we
don't know a ton about, like you said, his early childhood,
but it was he lived rough, no question about that.
The family didn't have a lot of money before becoming
a farmer. Nathaniel had fought as a member of the militia,
the Minutemen in the Revolutionary War. Their savings were very
(12:53):
meager and they were kind of blasted on through especially
in the post war chaos. Government wasn't paying folks like
him enough, not nearly enough to raise a family as
massive as the one that they had found themselves raising.
So there were a lot of mouths to feed and
you know, likely not a lot of space, but it
(13:16):
would seem that they were happy. Yeah, we can't help
but imagine, and that's a romanticized concept.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
But we could exercise that. We also can't help but
imagine a childhood in such a crowded household, you know,
Charlie in the chocolate factory style. It must have instilled
a love of the outdoors in young Johnny because going
outside of this very crowded series of cabins was literally
(13:48):
the only time this guy could get some peace and quiet.
So it's no surprise, actually, Max, john reminds me a
little bit of your brother Alex. According to some biographers,
when he's eighteen years old, he goes to one of
his half brothers who's eleven years old, a guy named
(14:09):
Nathaniel Goolie Chapman, and he says, hey, let's get out
of this cartoonishly crowded house. It's seventeen ninety two. Let's
go west. And they basically became hobos until eighteen oh five.
That's when they agreed, That's when their dad moved again.
(14:29):
They agreed to meet up with them in Ohio. And Max,
we see you popping in and out here. Are we
being unfair to our composer?
Speaker 2 (14:38):
I was a little to say, are you calling Alex a hobo?
Speaker 1 (14:40):
I'm he's a jolly traveler, a jolly traveler.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Thank you, Noel.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Now.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
I also I don't think it's fair the pejorative, the
term hobo as a pejorative. I don't care for hobo
is awesome. I think it rules. And we often talk
about hobo codes and the lexicon of symbols and things
and that, But it does seem like people kind of
turn their nose up when you say hobo, and I
just think it's to me a romanticized kind of type
(15:10):
of figure, like a like a wandering troubadour.
Speaker 5 (15:13):
You know.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
The difference between and this is from people I know
in the traveling community even now, the difference between a
hobo and a bum, and this was a huge deal
during the Great Depression. The difference is that a hobo
is traveling to make an honest day's living, to seek
not just adventure, but to also be a meaningful, productive
(15:38):
part of society, whereas a bum is just.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
He's bumkinga out there bumming. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
The takers, they're not reciprocators.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
They will help you, you know.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
The term was originated in the American West. Does makes
sense for where we're going with the story, as a
term referring to a tinerant railway worker, which totally lines
up with your mention the traveling community aka train kids,
which is very much an extension of that. The etymology
is like a lot of etymology and fun terms like
(16:09):
this a little bit debated over. But one would be
homeward bound, which I kind of dig right, like the hobo. Yeah, yeah,
I think that's cool.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
It's interesting.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Maybe a retroactively manufactured portmanteau, but I do love it, you.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Know, one hundred percent, and all of these, like there's
another one that references the city of Hoboken. Okay, yeah,
well yeah, but that's sort of like a Schicken or
the egg kind of thing, you're right.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yeah, And we know that this younger half brother, Nathaniel Junior,
when his when his family shows up to Ohio, he says, look, Johnny,
i'm gonna stay here with dad. I'm gonna help farm
the land. And John says, I'm not done roaming the
horizon becons.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
So he this is so weird.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
He does have like a jet apple mentor. He becomes
the padawan for an apple farmer whose name we don't
fully know. He's just listed as a mister Crawford, and
(17:19):
John becomes an apprentice of this, mister Crawford. This is
where he learns to make nurseries and orchards. This is
probably what sets him on his later very apple centric career.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
I'm sorry, I'm distracted because it just popped into my head.
A song from the movie A Mighty Wind, the Christopher
Guest mockumentary about like a folk revival, and there's a
group that's depicted in that that Guests himself plays a
member of called the Folkesman. And this song called never
did No Wandering. And the beauty of it, the joke
(17:53):
of it is it's this romanticized the versus descriptions of
all of these adventures on the highway and byways. But
then the chorus is the fact that this person singing
it never did any It says, my mama was the
cold North wind, my daddy was the son of a
railroad man from west of Hell, where the trains don't
even run. Never heard the whistle of a southbound train
(18:16):
or the singing of its driving wheel. No, I never
did no wondering, Never did no wondering, Never did no wondering.
After all, it's it's such a subtle, dry joke. But
Johnny definitely did some wandering.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yeah, John did, and we'll never know. We'll never know
the entirety of the details of his adventures. Some of
the specifics are again lost to time irreparably. This is
also super convenient for the myth building. But we know
that by the early eighteen hundreds, by the turn of
(18:50):
the nineteenth century, our guy was on the western edge
of Pennsylvania because he wanted to be near the country's
rapidly expanding western frontier. At the turn of the nineteenth century,
who are speculators, there were private companies. They were buying
up vast walls of land in what they called the
(19:10):
Northwest Territory, and they were just waiting for settlers to
arrive and buy it. There is a fascinating economic context here,
and we've got to share it with you courtesy of
the Smithsonian.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yes we do. Starting in seventeen ninety two, the Ohio
Company of Associates made a deal with potential settlers anyone
willing to form There's other versions of this kind of deal,
where you'd like promise to settle, they'd give you a
tract of land or like a little bit of starting
up money. Anyone willing to form a permanent homestead on
(19:45):
the wilderness beyond, Ohio's first permanent settlement would be granted
one hundred acres of land. To prove their homesteads to
be permanent, settlers were required to plant fifty apple trees
and twenty peach trees in three years. Says an average
apple tree took roughly ten years to bear fruit. It's
(20:05):
a long game with these trees, man, with these fruit trees.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Right, they're making sure that people aren't just getting land
or buying it remotely in Save Boston. They're saying, you
have to live here. You have to show your commitment
to have future generations live here. And John Chapman clocks
this opportunity immediately. So we have to remember that planting
(20:30):
a functioning orchard or a nursery, it is a specialized
skill set. It's way different from just, you know, from
just you know, finishing your favorite fruit or throwing some
herbs willy nilly in your backyard and starting an herb garden.
John takes again to the road and he wanders on
(20:52):
foot from Pennsylvania all the way to Illinois. He's continually
moving just ahead of the settlers or quiet part allowed
the colonizers and he purchases parcels of land, and so
before the settlers get there, he has already cultivated these
orchards and nurseries. So when you're like, let's say we're
(21:16):
the four of us, you listening, and Nola Maxim myself,
we are traveling right, we're going to make a homestead
out west. When we show up to this undeveloped land,
we see John Chapman, who has already quite some time
before created one of those orchards that we need to
(21:39):
satisfy our legal agreement with the government. And he says, look,
I'll sell it to you and I'll be back. I
got to move on.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
He's a bit of a pied piper type figure in right,
you know, and a good reverse pied piper. I don't know.
So wait the did that not? So? Wasn't it a
little suspicious that the trees were already a little further
along than they would have been to satisfy that deal?
Speaker 3 (22:02):
The love it?
Speaker 2 (22:03):
They liked it. They were They were like.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
We already have so much to do. We have to
build our log cabin.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Oh that is a good point. No, I'm sure they did.
I guess what I just mean is like wouldn't the
government be like, well, that's cheating. You got Johnny Appleseed
did it for you.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
They actually liked it because it promoted permanence and it
made the settlers more likely to hang out there for
that extended amount of time.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
I'm super excited to talk a little bit about how
apples are propagated and the whole idea of like how
do you prevent monoculture and all that, and if you
want a cool visual representation of all of this. Everything
I know about this other than the reading up on
this research brief that you'd put together, Ben came from
this news Zach califanakas gardening show.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Yes, I love it.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Very first episode he talks about apples and versus seeds
and all of that. We're going to get into that,
but really quickly has had to mention just recently found
out on an episode of The dough Boys from the
guest Brandy Posey, who's a really great comedian, there's a
reality show called Homestead Rescue where like these like real
(23:13):
season grizzled homesteaders go like kitchen Nightmares style to families
that are trying to live live a life on the
range and are doing apparently a real bad job at it,
and they swoop in and like, you know, tell them
what they're where they're messing up, and get there, get
their homestead lives back and over. But they are apparently
(23:33):
being sued by a couple who claimed that they were
told they were going to be featured on a show
promoting homesteading as like seasoned homesteaders, and they weren't really
told they were actually they were going to be made
to look like Rubes and pillar Read for their bad
job at homesteading.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Oh man, well we do know that John had again
he went into this ten tost.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
He's got a lot of these things planted, and he's
now figured out a business model. Mark.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yes, yeah, he planted his first nursery on the bank
of a place called Broken Straw Creek, which is south
of Warren, Pennsylvania. And the settlers, to be fair, this
guy's not a grifter. They got a pretty nifty bargain.
He wouldn't just plant the trees in advance of their encroachment.
He also built fences to protect those trees from farm animals,
(24:28):
from wildlife. And he would set up this share system
because as we said, he travels widely he's nomadic. Before
he leaves for another area, he finds a neighbor, an
already established settler, and he says, look, you take care
of these nurseries, and you as the neighbor, as the
(24:48):
person in charge, you can sell the trees and their
produce on shares, and I will come back every year
or two to make sure everything is up to snow.
So he's doing he's doing like a distribution service and
a warranty service. Pretty forward thinking.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
It's very forward thinking, and you gotta wonder, like how
big picture was he thinking. Was he really looking at
the larger sustainable like, you know, farming of it all,
or was he just kind of doing his thing, you
know and just like really into apples. I just got
to wonder if he saw the big picture of what
(25:29):
of how important what he was doing was ultimately going
to be.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
That's a great question. It's one that we have to
we have to really dig into because the root of
it is the legend versus the man. But yeah, but
we are happy to report that part of the legend
is true. Yes, this guy really did walk all the time,
probably barefoot or barefoot as we said, and he really
(25:56):
did like some kind of apple themed. Santa carry around
a big old bag of apple seeds. He got them
for free. We'll get to this, but Nola, I want
to go back to something you tease there. Earlier. Apples
are super strange. The seeds from your favorite apple, they
(26:18):
don't always result in a tree making the same kind
of apples. So you could have your favorite, like let's say,
love a Fuji or a honey crisp. You could take
the seeds from your Fuji or honey crisp, and let's
say you chew it down to the core. You got
the seeds. You say, I'm not going to eat the
apple seeds because I saw always sundy in Philadelphia, I'm
(26:41):
gonna plant these Those seeds are vastly more likely not
to create another honey crisp or Fuji tree. To do that,
you have to practice something we call grafting, and grafting
is grafting is pretty much how the apple industry works today.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
I mean it's sort of self explanatory in a way
because you sort of shave off a piece of another
tree and then just kind of attach it to another tree. Right.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Yeah, you take that cutting, like you were saying, from
an existing tree that makes the apples you enjoy, and
then you fuse it onto what we call a rootstock
right at the bottom of the tree. It will adopt
the limb because of the great superpowers of apple genetics,
(27:37):
and then it will take a little time or your
new Frankenstein's monster to start producing fruit. But the investment
is worth it. You know, you won't be getting some unpredictable,
inedible mutant. You'll get your honey crisp, you will get
your fuji because it'll be exactly based on the original tree,
(27:58):
the donor tree that you got the graft from. But
the thing is, ah, guys, this is the easiest answer,
This is the best answer. This is what the apple
industry uses today. But Johnny said, oh no, no, no, no, no, no,
no no, God wouldn't like it.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
What yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
He was a devout member of the Swedenborgian Church, or
the New Church as he called it.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
He was assimilated by the swedenborg.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
He had this part of their I think this is
one of their oddly specific beliefs. But they said grafting
plants is a huge no no across the board because
it causes the plants unnecessary suffering. So this guy's a
faithful congregate if not a zealot. And he says, I
(28:52):
can't graft. I got to plant all my orchids from seed,
which he also, by the way, he gets these seeds
for free from cider mills back on the East coast.
And there are barrels and barrels of these seeds that
the cider mills don't want because the produce would be unpredictable.
(29:12):
And this means that the apples Johnny Apple seed John
Chapman plants the majority of time. If you're a person,
you're not going to eat them. They're called spitters. They're
like bitter, there's snow.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
They're stinky.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Oh no, they're bad apples. They're bad dude.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Yes, they're literally bad apple.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Bad apple man, I guess could also mean a rotten apple.
But that is that's a real myth killer right there.
I'm picture. I'm picturing there's just bounty of delightful treats
growing up out of the earth from Johnny Apple seeds.
You know, mystical touch. But no, there it is gonna
They're going to become useful though, if you can imagine
for other.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Purposes, Yeah, it might sound like his business was doomed
from the get go because of his conscientious objection is
religious constraints. But like you said, Noel, this is very
much not the case. People wanted permanence over taste. And
John's trees they didn't make delicious fruit the vast majority
of the time, but by God, they were tough. They
(30:15):
could survive those harsh winters and bad soil. He kept
a top secret ledger to arrange his travels, and he
checked in with all the nurseries and orchids he created.
Nobody ever saw this ledger, but we know he used
it because it was always on time and his clients
(30:36):
were incredibly happy to see the apple Man. Because this
is one of our first twists, right Like as you said, Noel,
these pioneers are not excited to see the apple Man
because they love eating fruit. They're excited about apples because
of something else. They absolutely love housing hardsider.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
They do do, and you don't need necessarily. It's sort
of like using a kind of brown avocado to make
a smoothie or something like that, right, yeah, you know,
or like you know, spinach that's just about to turn.
But if you if you saute it up, you might
not know the difference.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
So because of the condition, I can't have spinach, so
I eat a lot of kale and ooh that very
end of that kale. Then it's getting that really nasty,
funky smell. You know you have the most two days left.
Boil it up, blend it up and make it. Make
a kale sauce for some pasta.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Oh beautiful.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Yeah, and a kale with some sesame oil.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
It's a great. It's a great. But that is something
that you don't really get comfortable with till you get
a little older. I learned learned that from my mom,
or she was always like really preserving things till the
last possible, using every part of the unicorn in first.
Speaker 5 (31:51):
With my mom, she wants to like, if the eggs
go bad in two weeks, they gotta go.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
They gotta go. That's how my kid is. My kid
will not eat a yogurt one day past the expiration.
I'm like, kiddo, it's a sell by date. Don't care.
Dead to me. This yogurt is dead to me.
Speaker 5 (32:05):
And yogurt is kind of one of these things that's
getting better with age.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Anyways, we also clearly, like so many of our fellow
ridiculous historians got to a point where we became more
boy scout level thrifty when we had to pay for stuff.
That's a big part of it. And look, guys, cider
is great. It's not for everyone. That's fine. Not everything
(32:30):
is for everyone, as my mother used to say. But
both the non alcohol and the boozy version, the hard sider,
think youd have a sweet, crisp tang. It's perfect on
an autumn night, you know. I'll have I'll have a
cider once a year. I'll check it out. But what
may surprise a lot of us is back in the
(32:50):
seventeen and eighteen hundreds of North America, cider was so
much more popular. It was like the soda pop or
the Coca cola of its day, a.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Soft cider for the ladies, right, I mean, I'm joking,
but that is said often in like a westerns, you know,
with a lady like a soft cider or a sasparilla
in tombstone, I think probably in tombstone and in death way.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Okay, what is sasparilla?
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Sasparilla? It's a non alcoholic kind of root rooted soda. Okay, Okay,
that makes sense. So we Sioux City sasapar is apparently
a good one. It tastes a lot like rep beer.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
I like that as a Southern uh not insult but compliment.
Oh you love Sioux City sasine.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Jump in here.
Speaker 5 (33:38):
That's one of the best jokes and fall at New
Vegas for it's like the only one that doesn't have
Nuca cola. It's got Sunset Sasparilla instead.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
That's right, sunsets, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 5 (33:49):
But in thought for as h for Harbor DLC, they
have the fawed version of tab and nobody likes it.
I think, I think this commentary about people not liking it,
but episode do they have?
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Oh well, yeah, you get in situations and that's with the.
Speaker 5 (34:05):
Facts, seeking in the pond and peaceful in knowledge.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
It's just for you right now.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Yeah that's a great but we'll yeah, we'll do it.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
Uh So, Since we know.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
That the people in the frontier also didn't have a
lot of choices for beverages, so water sources could be
full of all sorts of bacteria or feces or other contaminants,
cider was actually a safe, stable source of hydration, similar
to like how other civilizations across the pond often drank wine, drink.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Wine, or drank mead. Even further back than that, A
lot of times it was out of necessity because you know,
water was gross and so at least you knew that
if it was fermented, yeah, it'd give you a little buzz,
but would also you know, quench your thirst. And that's
why they would typically drink what we might consider lower
ABV beverages. You know, they'd still be drinking at all
(35:11):
the livelong day. They had to have been soused on
the regular.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Dude. The cider was all. It all had some content
of alcohol, but to your point, Noel, it didn't have
nearly as much alcohol as say, like a hard liquor
that they'd be familiar with, like rum or whiskey. But
it was boozy, and people did, again drink it like water.
(35:35):
So let's just diplomatically say that probably adds up over time.
I think, yeah, the kids drank it too, and if
your parents were really strict, they would water it down
a little bit. But so what we're saying the kids
were also day drunk.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
They were at least day tipsy, so much so that
historians like Howard Means, who wrote Johnny appleseed the man
the myth the American story describes life on the frontier
as being lived through an alcoholic haze. That's history for you, though,
right there. I mean again to the point about the
like the Vikings or the Middle Ages, any of these
(36:12):
eras people were boozed up.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
It reminds me of one of those favorite apocryphal or
one of my favorite apocryphal statements from historians in Ireland.
Who would They would say, you know, it's interesting, the
Irish were doing really great, and then one of them
invented whiskey and they went and.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
It was all over.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah, it was all over us, all over from there,
what if we had a thing like this cider stuff,
but you only had to drink a couple SIPs of
it to get wasted.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Or what if we just had safe water, to be
honest like, scholars.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
No, no, no, no, no, no, get that.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
That guy's not fun. Get him out of here.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
No, let's drink out, Let's drink more of this wood juice,
will drink wood juice.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Scholars estimate that this spiked apple juice was consumed to
the tune of let's see in the seventeen hundreds, people
living in what we call Virginia Massachusetts. Now, each of them,
every man, woman and child, was guzzling down between fifteen
and thirty five gallons of hard cider per year. If
(37:28):
you're on the frontier, you're drinking an estimated this is
a dodgy one, but an estimated ten point five to
two ounces of hardsider a day. So I guess your
typical soda pop can will be what twelve ounces?
Speaker 2 (37:45):
I think that's right.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Okay, so we're drinking a little bit less than a
full soda can of Hardsider with booze. The children are
drinking it too. For comparison, as of twenty twenty or so,
the average modern American resident drinks twenty ounces of water
a day. Honestly, we should all be drinking more. Not
(38:08):
to judge, but this might be the time to go
get a cold glass of water.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
I think so. I got recently, got a big old
like mutagen tank looking thing that I fill up with
water and try to drink it two or three times
over during a day. And ben I got a picture
that they were consuming this stuff out of these giant
jugs with three x's on them.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
You know that's funny.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
I wonder if they If they were, they were definitely
reusing the jug. The historian you mentioned there means goes
on to describe hardsider not as a treat, not as
like a fun beverage like how we would grab a soda,
but instead as a staple of the frontier diet, breakfast, lunch, dinner,
(38:52):
as part of the as much a part of the
dining table as meat or bread, which means business wise,
Johnny Chapman nailed it, and churches loved him too. They
described him not as a businessman but as a missionary,
because they said, you know, he's walking around. He's not
just so in apple seeds and you know, teaching people
(39:13):
how to make booze, but he's also passing out religious tracts.
And this is where, okay, this is where we have
one of our peak descriptions of the real life John Chapman.
It's from an author named Rosella Rice. She writes about
this in publication from eighteen sixty three called The History
of Ashland County, Ohio. It's a little bit long, dude,
(39:36):
so I suggest we round Robinett.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Oh. I completely support this notion. I'll start. His personal
appearance was as singular as his character. He was a small,
chumped man, quick and restless in his motions and conversation.
His beard, though not long, was unshaven, and his hair
was long and dark, and his eyes black and sparkling.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
He lived the roughest life, often slept in the woods.
His clothing was mostly old, being generally given to him
in exchange for apple trees. He went barefooted and often
traveled miles through the snow in that way. He wore
on his head a ten utensil, which answered both as
a cap and a mush pot.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
Why not? Why I have two when you could just
do both things with one?
Speaker 1 (40:26):
I agree with it. I love a multifunctional device.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
I do too, I do too. A real character, indeed,
and he is known as the world's most successful apple
themed hobo. That's what your what's been, or a bit
of a proto hippie as we mentioned earlier. And you know,
he knew what he liked, he knew how he wanted
to live. He dressed the way he did out of
(40:49):
preference and also out of utility.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Yeah, not out of necessity. He reminds me a little
bit of Gabe Newle, the creator of Steam or the
co founder of just because Gabe Newell, You're never going
to see that guy in a three piece suit. It's
not that he can't afford a three piece suit. This
is one for the gaming nerds. It's because he wants
to dress comfortably, and Johnny seems like a pretty cool hang.
(41:17):
He isn't hurting for money. A lot of people didn't
know this at the time, but he ultimately accumulates about
twelve hundred acres across three states for his nurseries and
his orchards that he would buy up before the settlers arrive.
And if he's visiting a settlement and he doesn't feel
(41:37):
like sleeping out in the woods, which was his usual habit,
then he would make a deal, a side bet, you
could say, at parley, and he would say, I'll tell
stories to your children, and I'll proselytize to you about
the new church if you let me just sleep on
the floor inside. And you know, sometimes but not always,
(41:57):
they give him supper.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
He loved animals.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
He even I don't.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Know how true this is, but multiple historians said that
he befriended and tamed a wolf. He fixed up its
injured leg, and it just followed him around afterwards forever
until it died a familiar Yeah, just so, I mean,
we know he we know there are other accounts that
(42:24):
are this is kind of the myth making stuff because
we can't prove it. But there are other accounts of
him seeing mosquitoes flying over his campfire and immediately putting
out the fire because he didn't want the mosquitoes.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
The sweden Borgian of it all, they would do no harm,
you know.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Yeah, yeah, and you know he preserved the piece of
bear dens. He would see somebody about to put a
horse down and he would save the horse. And obviously,
predictably later in life he becomes a vegetarian. Some of
us know, I'm a former vegetarian myself, elapsed vegetarian. I
could say it's objectively the right thing to do, but
(43:06):
man meat.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
Though, right, and as you can imagine, living the traveling
life is not really one to settle down. He did
never marry. He reportedly told people that if he didn't
find his soulmate on earth, she'd be waiting for him
in heaven. That's real sweet.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Yeah, And we unfortunately don't know exactly when he made
it to the Pearly Gates. Multiple contemporary sources report different
dates of his death to give you the quick summation.
Most people agree it was sometime in March of eighteen
forty five. He went out well into old age, apparently
(43:43):
went peacefully in his place. His legend blossomed.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
But that's not.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Quite the end of the story, because you might be asking,
ridiculous historians, Hey, what were the guys teasing earlier? If
this dude planted so many trees, where the heck are they?
Speaker 3 (44:02):
Now?
Speaker 1 (44:02):
We've got a conspiratorial twist for you.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
What's the FBI think of all this? The FBI that
never existed during his lifetime. I know, how does this
figure into prohibition? You may be asking, Yeah, that's the
best question there.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
And also after Johnny Chapman passes, settlers keep his nurseries
and orchards going, and over time they cultivate specific varieties
of apple, kind of tailor made to the climate of
the United States, including stuff you can eat, not just
grind down and decider. So, thanks to John Chapman and
(44:39):
those who follow after him, the apple grows and changes
in step with the growth of America. It turns out
it's a big win for him to insist on planting
seeds instead of grafting, because he avoids, like you said
so brilliantly at the top of this episode, he avoids
the dangers of monoculture, which is what wrecked the good bananas.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
Right, right, And I think how we've either done. We
certainly must have talked about it in our Chiquita banana
episode or no, was it Dole the thing about the
overthrowing the governments? Yeah, that's right, exactly. Yeah, originally bananas
tasted different, and banana candy supposedly tastes more like the
(45:22):
gross Michelle, what the original bananas tasted like? Some of
these clever growing techniques led to you know what you
refer to delightfully been as successful mutants or hybrids, right,
things like the Golden Delicious or the Red Delicious. Which
I'm not an apple guy, by the way. I don't
(45:43):
want to eat an apple. I like an apple crisp,
an apple crumble, an apple pie. But it is my
understanding that the basicst of apples is the Red Delicious
a little overrated?
Speaker 1 (45:55):
Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. It's it's okay, but
it's often overrated. That's a positive note, however, for everybody
who is sipping a cider. As you're listening to this,
we do have an unfortunate, fascinating tale. Like you said, Noel,
the FBI eventually set their sights on Old Appleseed's legacy
(46:19):
way after he actually died. It's because that from nineteen
twenty to nineteen thirty three, Uncle Sam was pushed by
a crisis of conscience with its long history, if we're
being honest, it's long history of normalized alcoholism, they enacted prohibition.
Prohibition makes booze illegal. If you are the average person,
(46:43):
you can no longer make booze, even at home for yourself.
You cannot import it, you cannot transport it, and you
cannot sell anything that has booze in it.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
Right, and creates pretty overnight a thriving black market. Yeah,
as typically happens when any kind of prohibition is involved.
People don't like to be told what they can't do.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
That's exactly it, man. Because we also talked about this
and stuff.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
They don't want you to know.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
The US government was a bad guy here. Several times
they killed innocent people by poisoning alcohol supplies ethanol. Yeah, Yeah,
and it quickly became a law that a lot of
people would break just on principle, even if you're your
average American like like the Maxes or the Knowles or
(47:37):
the Bens, and you don't particularly love drinking booze, you
might still crack a cold win because hey, this is America, buddy, Hugh,
I won't do what you tell me. Thanks for the.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Beatbacks, Thanks for the lyric rage.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
Thanks for the lyric rage.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
Yeah. And so at this point, Johnny applesey Is has
already achieved the status a real American hero. He was
starting to get maligned a little bit because during Prohibition,
the FBI started to target his orchards.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
Yeah, they destroyed a lot of those appleseed descended trees
because those trees, again, the majority of them produced sour,
bitter apples that you would not want in your kid's lunchbox,
but that you would use to make hard cider. A
standard apple tree, depending on the various factors, in ideal circumstances,
(48:35):
it can live for well more than fifty years up
to one hundred. So a ton of these trees that
were murdered by the FBI, they either descended from John's
earlier trees or were even physically planted by John Chapman himself.
This wrecked the cider market. Luckily, at the same time,
(48:57):
water sanitation is improving, so that's not a death sentence.
But it does honestly suck.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
Yeah it does. It's not great for John's legacy.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
It's not great for the FBI either. Can you imagine
wouldn't you be a little irritated or wouldn't you feel
a little sidelined if there's this great war against alcohol
and they're like agent Brown, your job is to go
out there and cut down a bunch of trees.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
I see what you're saying.
Speaker 4 (49:29):
Ben.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
So, before that point, apples were primarily known as a
source of cider rather than an edible snack. You know
that you might dip in a peanut butter. Prohibition definitely
caused that pivot, changing the perception of the apple, and
it results in the apple industry that we really do
know and like some love others today. It did create
(49:54):
the whole notion of the apple as a healthy snack.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
Yeah yeah, and this may be about to change because
history is rouboristic. If I could churchify a word, uh, okay,
thank you dah. We made it happen, folks. As recently
as twenty twenty two cider has become the fastest growing
alcoholic beverage in all of the United States.
Speaker 3 (50:21):
There we have it.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
Johnny Appleseed modern myth incredibly different from the real John Chapman,
but I think it's safe to say they were both
probably really cool guys to hang out with, as long
as you didn't talk about religion.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
Yeah, best not, you know, with Johnny Appleseed, or at
the dinner table, or you know, over the holidays. This
is a sticky subject. No good can come of contentious religious debates.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
That's what the pedagod said recently. Oh, everybody's catching strays, folks.
Thank you so much for tuning in. We hope you
enjoyed this as much as as what much as we do.
If you haven't checked it out yet, do check out
our history of the hot dog. If you like more
food history courtesy of.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
Our own Noel Brown.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
I've been our research associate for this, and big thanks
to our super producer mister Max Williams, who can probably
also not yet eat apples for sure.
Speaker 5 (51:21):
Ohay, is this the first time we found of food
I can eat on air?
Speaker 2 (51:28):
This is will be You're gonna get Max a case
of apples.
Speaker 3 (51:31):
Ben Yeah, we're gonna get him a case of it, get.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
Him his own orchard. Yeah, I love it huge. Thanks
to Alex Williams, our very own Johnny Appleseed and composer
this banging bop that you're hearing in your ears right now,
Chris Frosciotis and Eavest Jeffcoats here in spirit. Thanks to
them too.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
Thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka the quizter, who is probably
chopping down a child's apple.
Speaker 2 (51:56):
Tree right now, my apple tree.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
And he goes, oh scenario.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
Because he's also French.
Speaker 3 (52:03):
Yes, he's also French. This bit big Thanks to a
non Frenchman.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
We love aj Bahama's Jacobs, Doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lands
and of course the rude Dude's a ridiculous crime.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our own
American piece of mythology. Our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
A real American hero.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Just so, that's mister Noel Brown.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
They call me Ben Bullen here for tax purposes.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
And uh, that's your government name.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
It's a government's name for a for you.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
You are assigned this name by a government at birth.
Where are you even from?
Speaker 4 (01:03):
Man?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
What's your deal? All right? Well, we all become myths
over time, right.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
In our own minds at least.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
So if you were a grade school kid in the US,
then you inevitably, sometime in your early years you hear
made up stories about folks like George Washington. You might
hear about folks like Pekos, Bill Paul Bunyan. Paul Bunyan
is a great winner, Daniel Boone, h Davy.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Crockett, David Hill. Rockett killed him a bar when he
was only three with his bare hands. Oh bar hands.
Speaker 5 (01:40):
Let's not talk about those amazing heroic stories you heard
about Richard Nixon.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Ah, Yes, Richard Nixon. He was sort of a pecos
story was English.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I think I think Richard Nixon was once a puppet
and then he told lies and his nose got big,
and then he became a real boy and then got ached.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I was gonna say he never quite became a real boy.
But we've got a we've got a character from this
American pantheon that's fascinated us for a while.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
You may know him by his street.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Name, Johnny apple Seed. The popular tale will hold that
this guy, like some demeter of old, traveled across the
United States on foot, planting apple trees. Yeah, barfoot and
(02:32):
planting apple trees, making a bit of mischief along the way.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
The thing is, whatever, the most wholesome act of terrorism
that ever took place.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
You get out of town with your apples and seeds
and ye trees.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
I'm gonna plant food and shade for everyone as.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
An active domestic It's like when it's like the how
the plot of Footloose, which you taught me, is apparently
all about a town that doesn't want people dancing, yea.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
And then Kevin Bacon comes in and shakes it all
up with his literally by shaking his hips and this.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Story of Johnny Appleseed has fascinated us for a bit.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Folks.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
You see, it's loosely based on real world events, but
it reminded me in the research for this, it reminded
me of our earlier conversations about what loosely based or
inspired by means. And we're going to posit to you
ridiculous historians that the actual story here is even more
(03:35):
ridiculous than the legend.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah, and it even has some crossover with our sister
show stuff they don't want you to know, which is
a bit of a twist that I'm not going to spoil,
but yeah, we'll get there. Most American kids, do, you know,
hear about Johnny Appleseed in school? You might have seen
a version of his story on one of those little
children's books with all the historical figures with the giant
heads you know on the front. Yeah, who was I
(03:59):
think is what they're called. Maybe I made that up,
but you know what I'm talking about. You've seen him
in that delightful little section of Barnes and Noble with
the stage and all the woodland creatures on the wall,
story Time in the app story Time in the Afternoon
with Johnny apples seed. He was in a way kind
of a proto hippie, but like he wasn't he was
(04:20):
good for something.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Yeah, yeah, think about this. It's classic Americano. We've got
a noble nomad on a exotic quest to spread produce,
specifically apples, throughout the still forming emergent United States. And
we know Britannica is a British source, but they're really
good for this one. So maybe we give you their
(04:44):
description of our boy John.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah. They described him as being cheerful and generous in nature,
with an affinity for the wilderness, a gentleness of spirit
that extended to the animal kingdom and all those aforementioned
woodland creatures. He was also super into Jesus, way into
m but not but you know what that's not about
(05:07):
at all. He also, in addition to his love of
the Bible, he also loved all of nature's great bounties
and h and had a working knowledge of medicinal herbs.
He also found quite an affinity with the native peoples
of this land, the Native Americans, which is not always
(05:28):
in line with what you think of as a typical
Christian in this in this day and age.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Oh yeah, that's a great point, Noel.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
He's sort of like a live and let live Christian.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Oh yeah, I could see that. He was known to
be the kind of guy who would hang out with anyone.
And above all, he's often described in terms of his
eccentric appearance. He had very long hair. He in place
of your typical tricorn hat or whatever, he wore an
(06:00):
inverted metal pan that he used as a hat, and
he used it to cook stuff. He was not a
fan of shoes. He was basically wearing cast off rags
for pants, and he had a coffee sack over his shoulders.
That's the part of the legend where he would have
holes cut out for arms and he would have a
(06:21):
bag of apple seeds. It's a fun, wholesome story.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah there, if I'm not mistaken. Like a lot of
these mythical creatures of American folklore, there is an old
Disney cartoon that personifies old Johnny Appleseed.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yeah, let's play a clip. This current image that grade
school kids in our country have about Johnny Appleseed comes
largely from a nineteen forty eight Disney film called Melody Time.
It depicts Johnny Appleseed in sort of Cinderella esque fashion.
(06:56):
He's surrounded by blue songbirds. He's got a jolly guardian angel.
We're gonna play a little clip right now, and a
stew pot for a hat and a stewpot for a hat.
So we're gonna play this clip. Here we go, bluebirds.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
The lard is good to me and religion.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
Yeah, the lard, yeah, because yeah, yeah, yeah, because of
you know, cooking a mushpan. So that's the Johnny Appleseeds
song voice like an angel, like a songbird himself.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
H you know, we did. We didn't use the term.
I think I may have said it over the song
and you might not have heard it. But the term
mushpan is a new one to me, and in looking
it up, it is typically referring to a fry pan uh,
devoted to making like corn meal or corn bread, you know,
sort of like a cast iron skillet. But I love
(07:57):
the term mushpan. That's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah it does again sound like a British insult.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Oh, Ben, I was right, and I know that you
already knew this. But the Johnny Appleseed cartoon is has
been released in an addition called American Legends Disney American legends.
That also includes a cartoon they did about Paul Bunyan
and about John Henry who was a steel driving man.
And there's one other little let's see the Brave Engineer.
(08:27):
Oh okay, about the exploits of legendary railroad engineer John
Luther Casey Jones. Casey Jones, ah okay at a slower speed.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
So we know that some grade schoolers of a certain age,
no offense to anybody, may have even dressed up like
Johnny Appleseed for class projects.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
But it is It is a costume you can make
with stuff laying around.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Yeah, all you need is in apple. But when you
are learning this myth, this folklore, these kids, you're you're
often gonna be missing out on the real story because
you see, fellow ridiculous historians, the character Johnny Appleseeed is
based on an actual person named John Chapman.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
John Chapman. The app is in there, it's contained within
the name. If it's not. If that's not nominated determinism,
I don't know what is. It's just one pee true.
It's true, lizar I agree, he got it.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
This guy is he's born before the United States is
a thing. It's September twenty sixth, seventeen seventy four. It's
a place called leo Minster. At the time, it is
a province of Massachusetts Bay because they still don't have
states yet.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Ben, speaking of Massachusetts Bay, have you been enjoying Widows Bay?
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Yes, yeah, I'm read up.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Are you up to date? Did you watch the most
recent one? I did? I did too. I just I
don't think we've talked about it on the show, but
it is a really really fun Stephen King esque series
on Apple TV. And there is an episode and it
think it's kind of a flashback to colonial times on
this cursed island. So there's you know, there's some ridiculous
(10:15):
history contained. There's a really creepy museum that has all this,
like cannibalism in the church. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
They also they also do from a writing perspective, they
do a wonderful job threading the line between.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Comedy and horror.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
One of the best examples I've ever seen.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
I thank you. I completely agree. I was going to
say something very I've been I've been saying something very
similar when I'm bragging about it. It just it is
genuinely scary at times, genuinely sweet and genuinely funny, and
the performances are all just phenomenal, and you never believe
that main guy as British as they come.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
And also, do check out if you're a fan of
what's his name, Matthew Ris. Yeah, okay, thank you. Do
check out the Americans. If you're a family he was
in there. They don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
I never okay, thank you, Ben, because i need something
fresh right now while I'm waiting for the next Widow's
beta drop, I'm going to check out the Americans.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Never so much of John Chapman's early years were lost
to history. We do know that he was the second
child of a couple called Nathaniel and Elizabeth Chapman. Unfortunately,
like so many families in this time, in this part
of the world, childbirth was a hard mortality threat, so
(11:34):
his mother passed away when he was very young, at
seventeen seventy six, so he's at most two years old.
She passes away after giving birth to a child, who
also passes away soon after, so John never really got
to meet that sibling. In seventeen eighty, probably due to
(11:57):
economic circumstances as much as to romance, his father, Nathaniel remarries.
This time he marries a lady named Lucy Cohley, and
Nathaniel and Coley go on to have ten more children.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yep, he sure did. And given given the aforementioned risk
of childbirth mortality, that seems like a risky move. Yeah,
in that DNA's but you know, it was also like
you know that there was there was no birth control.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Either, or cable or social media.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Anything to do much of anything. Yes, yeah, so we
don't know a ton about, like you said, his early childhood,
but it was he lived rough, no question about that.
The family didn't have a lot of money before becoming
a farmer. Nathaniel had fought as a member of the militia,
the Minutemen in the Revolutionary War. Their savings were very
(12:53):
meager and they were kind of blasted on through especially
in the post war chaos. Government wasn't paying folks like
him enough, not nearly enough to raise a family as
massive as the one that they had found themselves raising.
So there were a lot of mouths to feed and
you know, likely not a lot of space, but it
(13:16):
would seem that they were happy. Yeah, we can't help
but imagine, and that's a romanticized concept.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
But we could exercise that. We also can't help but
imagine a childhood in such a crowded household, you know,
Charlie in the chocolate factory style. It must have instilled
a love of the outdoors in young Johnny because going
outside of this very crowded series of cabins was literally
(13:48):
the only time this guy could get some peace and quiet.
So it's no surprise, actually, Max, john reminds me a
little bit of your brother Alex. According to some biographers,
when he's eighteen years old, he goes to one of
his half brothers who's eleven years old, a guy named
(14:09):
Nathaniel Goolie Chapman, and he says, hey, let's get out
of this cartoonishly crowded house. It's seventeen ninety two. Let's
go west. And they basically became hobos until eighteen oh five.
That's when they agreed, That's when their dad moved again.
(14:29):
They agreed to meet up with them in Ohio. And Max,
we see you popping in and out here. Are we
being unfair to our composer?
Speaker 2 (14:38):
I was a little to say, are you calling Alex a hobo?
Speaker 1 (14:40):
I'm he's a jolly traveler, a jolly traveler.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Thank you, Noel.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Now.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
I also I don't think it's fair the pejorative, the
term hobo as a pejorative. I don't care for hobo
is awesome. I think it rules. And we often talk
about hobo codes and the lexicon of symbols and things
and that, But it does seem like people kind of
turn their nose up when you say hobo, and I
just think it's to me a romanticized kind of type
(15:10):
of figure, like a like a wandering troubadour.
Speaker 5 (15:13):
You know.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
The difference between and this is from people I know
in the traveling community even now, the difference between a
hobo and a bum, and this was a huge deal
during the Great Depression. The difference is that a hobo
is traveling to make an honest day's living, to seek
not just adventure, but to also be a meaningful, productive
(15:38):
part of society, whereas a bum is just.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
He's bumkinga out there bumming. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
The takers, they're not reciprocators.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
They will help you, you know.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
The term was originated in the American West. Does makes
sense for where we're going with the story, as a
term referring to a tinerant railway worker, which totally lines
up with your mention the traveling community aka train kids,
which is very much an extension of that. The etymology
is like a lot of etymology and fun terms like
(16:09):
this a little bit debated over. But one would be
homeward bound, which I kind of dig right, like the hobo. Yeah, yeah,
I think that's cool.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
It's interesting.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Maybe a retroactively manufactured portmanteau, but I do love it, you.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Know, one hundred percent, and all of these, like there's
another one that references the city of Hoboken. Okay, yeah,
well yeah, but that's sort of like a Schicken or
the egg kind of thing, you're right.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yeah, And we know that this younger half brother, Nathaniel Junior,
when his when his family shows up to Ohio, he says, look, Johnny,
i'm gonna stay here with dad. I'm gonna help farm
the land. And John says, I'm not done roaming the
horizon becons.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
So he this is so weird.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
He does have like a jet apple mentor. He becomes
the padawan for an apple farmer whose name we don't
fully know. He's just listed as a mister Crawford, and
(17:19):
John becomes an apprentice of this, mister Crawford. This is
where he learns to make nurseries and orchards. This is
probably what sets him on his later very apple centric career.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
I'm sorry, I'm distracted because it just popped into my head.
A song from the movie A Mighty Wind, the Christopher
Guest mockumentary about like a folk revival, and there's a
group that's depicted in that that Guests himself plays a
member of called the Folkesman. And this song called never
did No Wandering. And the beauty of it, the joke
(17:53):
of it is it's this romanticized the versus descriptions of
all of these adventures on the highway and byways. But
then the chorus is the fact that this person singing
it never did any It says, my mama was the
cold North wind, my daddy was the son of a
railroad man from west of Hell, where the trains don't
even run. Never heard the whistle of a southbound train
(18:16):
or the singing of its driving wheel. No, I never
did no wondering, Never did no wondering, Never did no wondering.
After all, it's it's such a subtle, dry joke. But
Johnny definitely did some wandering.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yeah, John did, and we'll never know. We'll never know
the entirety of the details of his adventures. Some of
the specifics are again lost to time irreparably. This is
also super convenient for the myth building. But we know
that by the early eighteen hundreds, by the turn of
(18:50):
the nineteenth century, our guy was on the western edge
of Pennsylvania because he wanted to be near the country's
rapidly expanding western frontier. At the turn of the nineteenth century,
who are speculators, there were private companies. They were buying
up vast walls of land in what they called the
(19:10):
Northwest Territory, and they were just waiting for settlers to
arrive and buy it. There is a fascinating economic context here,
and we've got to share it with you courtesy of
the Smithsonian.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yes we do. Starting in seventeen ninety two, the Ohio
Company of Associates made a deal with potential settlers anyone
willing to form There's other versions of this kind of deal,
where you'd like promise to settle, they'd give you a
tract of land or like a little bit of starting
up money. Anyone willing to form a permanent homestead on
(19:45):
the wilderness beyond, Ohio's first permanent settlement would be granted
one hundred acres of land. To prove their homesteads to
be permanent, settlers were required to plant fifty apple trees
and twenty peach trees in three years. Says an average
apple tree took roughly ten years to bear fruit. It's
(20:05):
a long game with these trees, man, with these fruit trees.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Right, they're making sure that people aren't just getting land
or buying it remotely in Save Boston. They're saying, you
have to live here. You have to show your commitment
to have future generations live here. And John Chapman clocks
this opportunity immediately. So we have to remember that planting
(20:30):
a functioning orchard or a nursery, it is a specialized
skill set. It's way different from just, you know, from
just you know, finishing your favorite fruit or throwing some
herbs willy nilly in your backyard and starting an herb garden.
John takes again to the road and he wanders on
(20:52):
foot from Pennsylvania all the way to Illinois. He's continually
moving just ahead of the settlers or quiet part allowed
the colonizers and he purchases parcels of land, and so
before the settlers get there, he has already cultivated these
orchards and nurseries. So when you're like, let's say we're
(21:16):
the four of us, you listening, and Nola Maxim myself,
we are traveling right, we're going to make a homestead
out west. When we show up to this undeveloped land,
we see John Chapman, who has already quite some time
before created one of those orchards that we need to
(21:39):
satisfy our legal agreement with the government. And he says, look,
I'll sell it to you and I'll be back. I
got to move on.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
He's a bit of a pied piper type figure in right,
you know, and a good reverse pied piper. I don't know.
So wait the did that not? So? Wasn't it a
little suspicious that the trees were already a little further
along than they would have been to satisfy that deal?
Speaker 3 (22:02):
The love it?
Speaker 2 (22:03):
They liked it. They were They were like.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
We already have so much to do. We have to
build our log cabin.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Oh that is a good point. No, I'm sure they did.
I guess what I just mean is like wouldn't the
government be like, well, that's cheating. You got Johnny Appleseed
did it for you.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
They actually liked it because it promoted permanence and it
made the settlers more likely to hang out there for
that extended amount of time.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
I'm super excited to talk a little bit about how
apples are propagated and the whole idea of like how
do you prevent monoculture and all that, and if you
want a cool visual representation of all of this. Everything
I know about this other than the reading up on
this research brief that you'd put together, Ben came from
this news Zach califanakas gardening show.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Yes, I love it.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Very first episode he talks about apples and versus seeds
and all of that. We're going to get into that,
but really quickly has had to mention just recently found
out on an episode of The dough Boys from the
guest Brandy Posey, who's a really great comedian, there's a
reality show called Homestead Rescue where like these like real
(23:13):
season grizzled homesteaders go like kitchen Nightmares style to families
that are trying to live live a life on the
range and are doing apparently a real bad job at it,
and they swoop in and like, you know, tell them
what they're where they're messing up, and get there, get
their homestead lives back and over. But they are apparently
(23:33):
being sued by a couple who claimed that they were
told they were going to be featured on a show
promoting homesteading as like seasoned homesteaders, and they weren't really
told they were actually they were going to be made
to look like Rubes and pillar Read for their bad
job at homesteading.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Oh man, well we do know that John had again
he went into this ten tost.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
He's got a lot of these things planted, and he's
now figured out a business model. Mark.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yes, yeah, he planted his first nursery on the bank
of a place called Broken Straw Creek, which is south
of Warren, Pennsylvania. And the settlers, to be fair, this
guy's not a grifter. They got a pretty nifty bargain.
He wouldn't just plant the trees in advance of their encroachment.
He also built fences to protect those trees from farm animals,
(24:28):
from wildlife. And he would set up this share system
because as we said, he travels widely he's nomadic. Before
he leaves for another area, he finds a neighbor, an
already established settler, and he says, look, you take care
of these nurseries, and you as the neighbor, as the
(24:48):
person in charge, you can sell the trees and their
produce on shares, and I will come back every year
or two to make sure everything is up to snow.
So he's doing he's doing like a distribution service and
a warranty service. Pretty forward thinking.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
It's very forward thinking, and you gotta wonder, like how
big picture was he thinking. Was he really looking at
the larger sustainable like, you know, farming of it all,
or was he just kind of doing his thing, you
know and just like really into apples. I just got
to wonder if he saw the big picture of what
(25:29):
of how important what he was doing was ultimately going
to be.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
That's a great question. It's one that we have to
we have to really dig into because the root of
it is the legend versus the man. But yeah, but
we are happy to report that part of the legend
is true. Yes, this guy really did walk all the time,
probably barefoot or barefoot as we said, and he really
(25:56):
did like some kind of apple themed. Santa carry around
a big old bag of apple seeds. He got them
for free. We'll get to this, but Nola, I want
to go back to something you tease there. Earlier. Apples
are super strange. The seeds from your favorite apple, they
(26:18):
don't always result in a tree making the same kind
of apples. So you could have your favorite, like let's say,
love a Fuji or a honey crisp. You could take
the seeds from your Fuji or honey crisp, and let's
say you chew it down to the core. You got
the seeds. You say, I'm not going to eat the
apple seeds because I saw always sundy in Philadelphia, I'm
(26:41):
gonna plant these Those seeds are vastly more likely not
to create another honey crisp or Fuji tree. To do that,
you have to practice something we call grafting, and grafting
is grafting is pretty much how the apple industry works today.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
I mean it's sort of self explanatory in a way
because you sort of shave off a piece of another
tree and then just kind of attach it to another tree. Right.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Yeah, you take that cutting, like you were saying, from
an existing tree that makes the apples you enjoy, and
then you fuse it onto what we call a rootstock
right at the bottom of the tree. It will adopt
the limb because of the great superpowers of apple genetics,
(27:37):
and then it will take a little time or your
new Frankenstein's monster to start producing fruit. But the investment
is worth it. You know, you won't be getting some unpredictable,
inedible mutant. You'll get your honey crisp, you will get
your fuji because it'll be exactly based on the original tree,
(27:58):
the donor tree that you got the graft from. But
the thing is, ah, guys, this is the easiest answer,
This is the best answer. This is what the apple
industry uses today. But Johnny said, oh no, no, no, no, no, no,
no no, God wouldn't like it.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
What yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
He was a devout member of the Swedenborgian Church, or
the New Church as he called it.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
He was assimilated by the swedenborg.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
He had this part of their I think this is
one of their oddly specific beliefs. But they said grafting
plants is a huge no no across the board because
it causes the plants unnecessary suffering. So this guy's a
faithful congregate if not a zealot. And he says, I
(28:52):
can't graft. I got to plant all my orchids from seed,
which he also, by the way, he gets these seeds
for free from cider mills back on the East coast.
And there are barrels and barrels of these seeds that
the cider mills don't want because the produce would be unpredictable.
(29:12):
And this means that the apples Johnny Apple seed John
Chapman plants the majority of time. If you're a person,
you're not going to eat them. They're called spitters. They're
like bitter, there's snow.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
They're stinky.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Oh no, they're bad apples. They're bad dude.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Yes, they're literally bad apple.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Bad apple man, I guess could also mean a rotten apple.
But that is that's a real myth killer right there.
I'm picture. I'm picturing there's just bounty of delightful treats
growing up out of the earth from Johnny Apple seeds.
You know, mystical touch. But no, there it is gonna
They're going to become useful though, if you can imagine
for other.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Purposes, Yeah, it might sound like his business was doomed
from the get go because of his conscientious objection is
religious constraints. But like you said, Noel, this is very
much not the case. People wanted permanence over taste. And
John's trees they didn't make delicious fruit the vast majority
of the time, but by God, they were tough. They
(30:15):
could survive those harsh winters and bad soil. He kept
a top secret ledger to arrange his travels, and he
checked in with all the nurseries and orchids he created.
Nobody ever saw this ledger, but we know he used
it because it was always on time and his clients
(30:36):
were incredibly happy to see the apple Man. Because this
is one of our first twists, right Like as you said, Noel,
these pioneers are not excited to see the apple Man
because they love eating fruit. They're excited about apples because
of something else. They absolutely love housing hardsider.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
They do do, and you don't need necessarily. It's sort
of like using a kind of brown avocado to make
a smoothie or something like that, right, yeah, you know,
or like you know, spinach that's just about to turn.
But if you if you saute it up, you might
not know the difference.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
So because of the condition, I can't have spinach, so
I eat a lot of kale and ooh that very
end of that kale. Then it's getting that really nasty,
funky smell. You know you have the most two days left.
Boil it up, blend it up and make it. Make
a kale sauce for some pasta.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Oh beautiful.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Yeah, and a kale with some sesame oil.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
It's a great. It's a great. But that is something
that you don't really get comfortable with till you get
a little older. I learned learned that from my mom,
or she was always like really preserving things till the
last possible, using every part of the unicorn in first.
Speaker 5 (31:51):
With my mom, she wants to like, if the eggs
go bad in two weeks, they gotta go.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
They gotta go. That's how my kid is. My kid
will not eat a yogurt one day past the expiration.
I'm like, kiddo, it's a sell by date. Don't care.
Dead to me. This yogurt is dead to me.
Speaker 5 (32:05):
And yogurt is kind of one of these things that's
getting better with age.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Anyways, we also clearly, like so many of our fellow
ridiculous historians got to a point where we became more
boy scout level thrifty when we had to pay for stuff.
That's a big part of it. And look, guys, cider
is great. It's not for everyone. That's fine. Not everything
(32:30):
is for everyone, as my mother used to say. But
both the non alcohol and the boozy version, the hard sider,
think youd have a sweet, crisp tang. It's perfect on
an autumn night, you know. I'll have I'll have a
cider once a year. I'll check it out. But what
may surprise a lot of us is back in the
(32:50):
seventeen and eighteen hundreds of North America, cider was so
much more popular. It was like the soda pop or
the Coca cola of its day, a.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Soft cider for the ladies, right, I mean, I'm joking,
but that is said often in like a westerns, you know,
with a lady like a soft cider or a sasparilla
in tombstone, I think probably in tombstone and in death way.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Okay, what is sasparilla?
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Sasparilla? It's a non alcoholic kind of root rooted soda. Okay, Okay,
that makes sense. So we Sioux City sasapar is apparently
a good one. It tastes a lot like rep beer.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
I like that as a Southern uh not insult but compliment.
Oh you love Sioux City sasine.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Jump in here.
Speaker 5 (33:38):
That's one of the best jokes and fall at New
Vegas for it's like the only one that doesn't have
Nuca cola. It's got Sunset Sasparilla instead.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
That's right, sunsets, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 5 (33:49):
But in thought for as h for Harbor DLC, they
have the fawed version of tab and nobody likes it.
I think, I think this commentary about people not liking it,
but episode do they have?
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Oh well, yeah, you get in situations and that's with the.
Speaker 5 (34:05):
Facts, seeking in the pond and peaceful in knowledge.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
It's just for you right now.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Yeah that's a great but we'll yeah, we'll do it.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
Uh So, Since we know.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
That the people in the frontier also didn't have a
lot of choices for beverages, so water sources could be
full of all sorts of bacteria or feces or other contaminants,
cider was actually a safe, stable source of hydration, similar
to like how other civilizations across the pond often drank wine, drink.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Wine, or drank mead. Even further back than that, A
lot of times it was out of necessity because you know,
water was gross and so at least you knew that
if it was fermented, yeah, it'd give you a little buzz,
but would also you know, quench your thirst. And that's
why they would typically drink what we might consider lower
ABV beverages. You know, they'd still be drinking at all
(35:11):
the livelong day. They had to have been soused on
the regular.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Dude. The cider was all. It all had some content
of alcohol, but to your point, Noel, it didn't have
nearly as much alcohol as say, like a hard liquor
that they'd be familiar with, like rum or whiskey. But
it was boozy, and people did, again drink it like water.
(35:35):
So let's just diplomatically say that probably adds up over time.
I think, yeah, the kids drank it too, and if
your parents were really strict, they would water it down
a little bit. But so what we're saying the kids
were also day drunk.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
They were at least day tipsy, so much so that
historians like Howard Means, who wrote Johnny appleseed the man
the myth the American story describes life on the frontier
as being lived through an alcoholic haze. That's history for you, though,
right there. I mean again to the point about the
like the Vikings or the Middle Ages, any of these
(36:12):
eras people were boozed up.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
It reminds me of one of those favorite apocryphal or
one of my favorite apocryphal statements from historians in Ireland.
Who would They would say, you know, it's interesting, the
Irish were doing really great, and then one of them
invented whiskey and they went and.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
It was all over.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah, it was all over us, all over from there,
what if we had a thing like this cider stuff,
but you only had to drink a couple SIPs of
it to get wasted.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Or what if we just had safe water, to be
honest like, scholars.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
No, no, no, no, no, no, get that.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
That guy's not fun. Get him out of here.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
No, let's drink out, Let's drink more of this wood juice,
will drink wood juice.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Scholars estimate that this spiked apple juice was consumed to
the tune of let's see in the seventeen hundreds, people
living in what we call Virginia Massachusetts. Now, each of them,
every man, woman and child, was guzzling down between fifteen
and thirty five gallons of hard cider per year. If
(37:28):
you're on the frontier, you're drinking an estimated this is
a dodgy one, but an estimated ten point five to
two ounces of hardsider a day. So I guess your
typical soda pop can will be what twelve ounces?
Speaker 2 (37:45):
I think that's right.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Okay, so we're drinking a little bit less than a
full soda can of Hardsider with booze. The children are
drinking it too. For comparison, as of twenty twenty or so,
the average modern American resident drinks twenty ounces of water
a day. Honestly, we should all be drinking more. Not
(38:08):
to judge, but this might be the time to go
get a cold glass of water.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
I think so. I got recently, got a big old
like mutagen tank looking thing that I fill up with
water and try to drink it two or three times
over during a day. And ben I got a picture
that they were consuming this stuff out of these giant
jugs with three x's on them.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
You know that's funny.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
I wonder if they If they were, they were definitely
reusing the jug. The historian you mentioned there means goes
on to describe hardsider not as a treat, not as
like a fun beverage like how we would grab a soda,
but instead as a staple of the frontier diet, breakfast, lunch, dinner,
(38:52):
as part of the as much a part of the
dining table as meat or bread, which means business wise,
Johnny Chapman nailed it, and churches loved him too. They
described him not as a businessman but as a missionary,
because they said, you know, he's walking around. He's not
just so in apple seeds and you know, teaching people
(39:13):
how to make booze, but he's also passing out religious tracts.
And this is where, okay, this is where we have
one of our peak descriptions of the real life John Chapman.
It's from an author named Rosella Rice. She writes about
this in publication from eighteen sixty three called The History
of Ashland County, Ohio. It's a little bit long, dude,
(39:36):
so I suggest we round Robinett.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Oh. I completely support this notion. I'll start. His personal
appearance was as singular as his character. He was a small,
chumped man, quick and restless in his motions and conversation.
His beard, though not long, was unshaven, and his hair
was long and dark, and his eyes black and sparkling.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
He lived the roughest life, often slept in the woods.
His clothing was mostly old, being generally given to him
in exchange for apple trees. He went barefooted and often
traveled miles through the snow in that way. He wore
on his head a ten utensil, which answered both as
a cap and a mush pot.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
Why not? Why I have two when you could just
do both things with one?
Speaker 1 (40:26):
I agree with it. I love a multifunctional device.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
I do too, I do too. A real character, indeed,
and he is known as the world's most successful apple
themed hobo. That's what your what's been, or a bit
of a proto hippie as we mentioned earlier. And you know,
he knew what he liked, he knew how he wanted
to live. He dressed the way he did out of
(40:49):
preference and also out of utility.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Yeah, not out of necessity. He reminds me a little
bit of Gabe Newle, the creator of Steam or the
co founder of just because Gabe Newell, You're never going
to see that guy in a three piece suit. It's
not that he can't afford a three piece suit. This
is one for the gaming nerds. It's because he wants
to dress comfortably, and Johnny seems like a pretty cool hang.
(41:17):
He isn't hurting for money. A lot of people didn't
know this at the time, but he ultimately accumulates about
twelve hundred acres across three states for his nurseries and
his orchards that he would buy up before the settlers arrive.
And if he's visiting a settlement and he doesn't feel
(41:37):
like sleeping out in the woods, which was his usual habit,
then he would make a deal, a side bet, you
could say, at parley, and he would say, I'll tell
stories to your children, and I'll proselytize to you about
the new church if you let me just sleep on
the floor inside. And you know, sometimes but not always,
(41:57):
they give him supper.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
He loved animals.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
He even I don't.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Know how true this is, but multiple historians said that
he befriended and tamed a wolf. He fixed up its
injured leg, and it just followed him around afterwards forever
until it died a familiar Yeah, just so, I mean,
we know he we know there are other accounts that
(42:24):
are this is kind of the myth making stuff because
we can't prove it. But there are other accounts of
him seeing mosquitoes flying over his campfire and immediately putting
out the fire because he didn't want the mosquitoes.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
The sweden Borgian of it all, they would do no harm,
you know.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Yeah, yeah, and you know he preserved the piece of
bear dens. He would see somebody about to put a
horse down and he would save the horse. And obviously,
predictably later in life he becomes a vegetarian. Some of
us know, I'm a former vegetarian myself, elapsed vegetarian. I
could say it's objectively the right thing to do, but
(43:06):
man meat.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
Though, right, and as you can imagine, living the traveling
life is not really one to settle down. He did
never marry. He reportedly told people that if he didn't
find his soulmate on earth, she'd be waiting for him
in heaven. That's real sweet.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Yeah, And we unfortunately don't know exactly when he made
it to the Pearly Gates. Multiple contemporary sources report different
dates of his death to give you the quick summation.
Most people agree it was sometime in March of eighteen
forty five. He went out well into old age, apparently
(43:43):
went peacefully in his place. His legend blossomed.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
But that's not.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Quite the end of the story, because you might be asking,
ridiculous historians, Hey, what were the guys teasing earlier? If
this dude planted so many trees, where the heck are they?
Speaker 3 (44:02):
Now?
Speaker 1 (44:02):
We've got a conspiratorial twist for you.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
What's the FBI think of all this? The FBI that
never existed during his lifetime. I know, how does this
figure into prohibition? You may be asking, Yeah, that's the
best question there.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
And also after Johnny Chapman passes, settlers keep his nurseries
and orchards going, and over time they cultivate specific varieties
of apple, kind of tailor made to the climate of
the United States, including stuff you can eat, not just
grind down and decider. So, thanks to John Chapman and
(44:39):
those who follow after him, the apple grows and changes
in step with the growth of America. It turns out
it's a big win for him to insist on planting
seeds instead of grafting, because he avoids, like you said
so brilliantly at the top of this episode, he avoids
the dangers of monoculture, which is what wrecked the good bananas.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
Right, right, And I think how we've either done. We
certainly must have talked about it in our Chiquita banana
episode or no, was it Dole the thing about the
overthrowing the governments? Yeah, that's right, exactly. Yeah, originally bananas
tasted different, and banana candy supposedly tastes more like the
(45:22):
gross Michelle, what the original bananas tasted like? Some of
these clever growing techniques led to you know what you
refer to delightfully been as successful mutants or hybrids, right,
things like the Golden Delicious or the Red Delicious. Which
I'm not an apple guy, by the way. I don't
(45:43):
want to eat an apple. I like an apple crisp,
an apple crumble, an apple pie. But it is my
understanding that the basicst of apples is the Red Delicious
a little overrated?
Speaker 1 (45:55):
Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. It's it's okay, but
it's often overrated. That's a positive note, however, for everybody
who is sipping a cider. As you're listening to this,
we do have an unfortunate, fascinating tale. Like you said, Noel,
the FBI eventually set their sights on Old Appleseed's legacy
(46:19):
way after he actually died. It's because that from nineteen
twenty to nineteen thirty three, Uncle Sam was pushed by
a crisis of conscience with its long history, if we're
being honest, it's long history of normalized alcoholism, they enacted prohibition.
Prohibition makes booze illegal. If you are the average person,
(46:43):
you can no longer make booze, even at home for yourself.
You cannot import it, you cannot transport it, and you
cannot sell anything that has booze in it.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
Right, and creates pretty overnight a thriving black market. Yeah,
as typically happens when any kind of prohibition is involved.
People don't like to be told what they can't do.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
That's exactly it, man. Because we also talked about this
and stuff.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
They don't want you to know.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
The US government was a bad guy here. Several times
they killed innocent people by poisoning alcohol supplies ethanol. Yeah, Yeah,
and it quickly became a law that a lot of
people would break just on principle, even if you're your
average American like like the Maxes or the Knowles or
(47:37):
the Bens, and you don't particularly love drinking booze, you
might still crack a cold win because hey, this is America, buddy, Hugh,
I won't do what you tell me. Thanks for the.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Beatbacks, Thanks for the lyric rage.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
Thanks for the lyric rage.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
Yeah. And so at this point, Johnny applesey Is has
already achieved the status a real American hero. He was
starting to get maligned a little bit because during Prohibition,
the FBI started to target his orchards.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
Yeah, they destroyed a lot of those appleseed descended trees
because those trees, again, the majority of them produced sour,
bitter apples that you would not want in your kid's lunchbox,
but that you would use to make hard cider. A
standard apple tree, depending on the various factors, in ideal circumstances,
(48:35):
it can live for well more than fifty years up
to one hundred. So a ton of these trees that
were murdered by the FBI, they either descended from John's
earlier trees or were even physically planted by John Chapman himself.
This wrecked the cider market. Luckily, at the same time,
(48:57):
water sanitation is improving, so that's not a death sentence.
But it does honestly suck.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
Yeah it does. It's not great for John's legacy.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
It's not great for the FBI either. Can you imagine
wouldn't you be a little irritated or wouldn't you feel
a little sidelined if there's this great war against alcohol
and they're like agent Brown, your job is to go
out there and cut down a bunch of trees.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
I see what you're saying.
Speaker 4 (49:29):
Ben.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
So, before that point, apples were primarily known as a
source of cider rather than an edible snack. You know
that you might dip in a peanut butter. Prohibition definitely
caused that pivot, changing the perception of the apple, and
it results in the apple industry that we really do
know and like some love others today. It did create
(49:54):
the whole notion of the apple as a healthy snack.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
Yeah yeah, and this may be about to change because
history is rouboristic. If I could churchify a word, uh, okay,
thank you dah. We made it happen, folks. As recently
as twenty twenty two cider has become the fastest growing
alcoholic beverage in all of the United States.
Speaker 3 (50:21):
There we have it.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
Johnny Appleseed modern myth incredibly different from the real John Chapman,
but I think it's safe to say they were both
probably really cool guys to hang out with, as long
as you didn't talk about religion.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
Yeah, best not, you know, with Johnny Appleseed, or at
the dinner table, or you know, over the holidays. This
is a sticky subject. No good can come of contentious religious debates.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
That's what the pedagod said recently. Oh, everybody's catching strays, folks.
Thank you so much for tuning in. We hope you
enjoyed this as much as as what much as we do.
If you haven't checked it out yet, do check out
our history of the hot dog. If you like more
food history courtesy of.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
Our own Noel Brown.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
I've been our research associate for this, and big thanks
to our super producer mister Max Williams, who can probably
also not yet eat apples for sure.
Speaker 5 (51:21):
Ohay, is this the first time we found of food
I can eat on air?
Speaker 2 (51:28):
This is will be You're gonna get Max a case
of apples.
Speaker 3 (51:31):
Ben Yeah, we're gonna get him a case of it, get.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
Him his own orchard. Yeah, I love it huge. Thanks
to Alex Williams, our very own Johnny Appleseed and composer
this banging bop that you're hearing in your ears right now,
Chris Frosciotis and Eavest Jeffcoats here in spirit. Thanks to
them too.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
Thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka the quizter, who is probably
chopping down a child's apple.
Speaker 2 (51:56):
Tree right now, my apple tree.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
And he goes, oh scenario.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
Because he's also French.
Speaker 3 (52:03):
Yes, he's also French. This bit big Thanks to a
non Frenchman.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
We love aj Bahama's Jacobs, Doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lands
and of course the rude Dude's a ridiculous crime.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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