September 10, 2024 • 48 mins
In this episode, we take a deep dive into the real story of Johnny Appleseed—exploring the man behind the myth. Was he truly the eccentric figure who wore a tin pot as a hat? How did his Swedenborgian faith influence his life's mission? We uncover the origins of this small religious sect, examining Johnny's unique spiritual path and his role in shaping the American frontier.
🍏 Unveiling Johnny Appleseed: Myths, Faith, and Apples 🌱
We discuss Johnny Appleseed's nonlinear journey as an entrepreneur and his deep connection to the Swedenborgian Bible, which guided him in planting apple orchards for pioneers expanding westward in pursuit of Manifest Destiny. The episode also explores how these orchards helped support the westward expansion and highlights a special pewter spoon—diving into its historical significance and how even small, everyday objects can tell powerful stories of the past.
🔗 Episode Links
Johnny Appleseed Education Center and Museum: https://www.johnnyappleseedmuseum.org/
Delights of Wisdom Concerning Conjugial Love: After which Follow Pleasures of Insanity Concerning Scortatory Love, by Emanuel Swedenborg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11248
Curator's Choice - A podcast for history nerds and museum lovers
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ayla Sparks (00:00):
the apples that he was growing.
They weren't the sweeter kindof apples, they were the more
tart apples that really youwould only use to make alcohol.
And so this article was callinghim the American Dionysus,
because really he was not justsupplying apples, it was more of
he was supplying alcohol to theAmerican West.
Is there any reality to that?
(00:20):
Hi, I'm Ayla Sparks, and thisis Curator's Choice, a podcast
for history nerds and museumlovers.
From ancient relics to modernmarvels, each episode of this
show features a new museum and acurator's choice of some
amazing artifacts housed there.
These guardians of history willshare insights, anecdotes and
(00:41):
the often untold stories thatbreathe life into the artifacts
they protect.
Thanks for tuning in to thisMighty Oak Media production and
enjoy the show.
Hello and welcome to anotherepisode of Curator's Choice.
Today on the show, we're at theJohnny Appleseed Education
Center and Museum in Urbana,ohio.
With Michaela Prescott as ourguide, we'll be exploring the
(01:03):
man, the possible myths and theapple legend himself, john
Chapman.
Join us as we explore the lifeof this apple orchard
entrepreneur and his oftenomitted missionary work, done in
the name of the Swedenborgianfaith.
Who was he really?
Tin hat or no?
(01:24):
Tin hat, barefoot man walkingthrough the woods or
brilliant-minded appleorchardist.
A small disclaimer for thisepisode a historical text will
be discussed which includesmention of certain conjugal
relations.
So listener discretion isadvised.
So without further ado, let'sjump right in with Mikayla.
(01:46):
Have you always been in lovewith Johnny Appleseed?
Mikaela Prescott (01:50):
Oh, absolutely not so.
I grew up in the centralPennsylvania area, so Johnny
Appleseed was a thing, but hisexistence was pretty much.
We had a Johnny Appleseed dayin school growing up, I remember
having one of those.
Yeah, what that equated to waswe got to eat sliced apples and
(02:10):
peanut butter, and we usuallydid a craft where, like, we
colored in the tin pot hat andstapled it to like a headband.
That was it.
He was never contextualizedbeyond that.
This is like my favorite thing.
When we get tours in, I alwaysask them what feels like dumb
questions have you ever heard ofhim?
You know those sorts of things.
And more and more I'm seeingespecially like younger groups
(02:32):
are like oh, he's not a realperson.
And then they get reallyembarrassed and I'm like no,
he's a real person.
Ayla Sparks (02:49):
And part of that for me is I like to soothe their
fears and be like I did notknow he was a real person until
I was in college.
But to be fair, I mean JohnnyAppleseed really is kind of.
He's got like a real myth andlegend aura about him.
Right, a tin saucepan on hishead running around planting
seeds in the American ManifestDestiny, like it just seems like
it would fit really well thatit's one of our urban legends.
Mikaela Prescott (03:02):
Yeah, he does fit super well within urban
legends.
He's even gone so far as, inthe book American Gods by Neil
Gaiman, he's mentioned, amongstother gods of antiquity, as like
an American god as a member ofour religious ranks.
That adds fuel to the fire inthis sort of idea that he's not
(03:22):
a real person, especially whenhe's getting categorized with
Paul Bunyan.
Was Paul Bunyan real?
I'm sure there was a cool guyat some point who was really
strong and did cut down trees.
Did he have a blue ox?
Was he pulling up railroads orwhatever he was doing?
Don't ruin this for me, butJohnny Appleseed gets lumped
(03:43):
into that same category for me,but Johnny Appleseed gets lumped
into that same category.
The largest part of what we doin the museum is sort of
untangling, that we're not asconcerned with forcing people to
remember.
Johnny Appleseed's real namewas John Chapman.
He was born September 26, 1770.
We're not as concerned withpeople remembering those hard
dates and sacks so much as wereally want them to go to the
museum and leave with a betterunderstanding of how history
(04:07):
gets done, using those criticalthinking skills.
When I tell you you know thesource of this story, this thing
we've always believed came fromsomeone who was seven years old
.
How does that frame yourunderstanding of this source?
Are you sure you want to trustit the whole way?
So that's sort of our biggergoal in our education less to
make you memorize his siblings'names and memorize every town he
(04:30):
stopped in, so much as okay.
So why did I come here thinkingthis wasn't a real person and
how can I sort of use myknowledge better in the future?
How did we go from this guy whowas very much of his life and
times and era and an incredibleperson?
But the apple thing is reallysort of the least interesting
thing about him to that's ahundred years after his death in
(04:53):
the 1930s and 40s, there's asudden explosion in interest of
this homeless vagabond, no shoes, throwing apple seeds, pet wolf
pot hat.
He just sort of comes out ofnowhere.
A hundred years after his death, suddenly, overnight, he goes
from being no one to being thisfolk hero.
Ayla Sparks (05:11):
It's really rewarding.
Well, so now that we'veestablished he absolutely
existed and at one point in timehe was a seven-year-old and a
14-year-old and a 30-year-old.
So who was Johnny Appleseed?
Brief history of this guy'slife.
Mikaela Prescott (05:26):
Yeah, I'll run you through like the most bare
bones crash course.
So, johnny Appleseed, real nameJohn Chapman.
He's born September 26th 1774in Lemonster, massachusetts.
That makes, at the time ofrecording this.
Next month would have been his250th birthday.
Oh wow.
He's born to his motherElizabeth and his father
(05:47):
Nathaniel.
His mother dies when he's veryyoung.
His father remarries, has abunch more kids, and so John
Chaffman, being a bit, you know,not quite involved with the
family at this point, as a youngman, goes to Pennsylvania, he
leaves Massachusetts and hewalks through New York and into
Pennsylvania.
Most importantly, he stops inthe Pittsburgh area and this is
(06:10):
where he learns the two sort ofpillars of his personhood, which
is he learns the trade oforcharding and he learns about
his Swedenborgian religion.
This is where he's sort ofintroduced to his religion,
religion.
This is where he's sort ofintroduced to his religion.
Now, when we're talking aboutthis character everybody knows
and loves, we come away withthis idea that he just eats
apples because he likes them andhe's spitting seeds and doesn't
(06:31):
realize there's a forestgrowing behind him everywhere he
goes.
Not at all.
He was very deliberate.
He was incredibly deliberate.
He was actually a quiteintelligent businessman when we
consider the US governmentessentially is saying hey,
soldiers, we can't pay you withmoney, but what we can pay you
with is all this territory wejust won, again in loose quotes.
(06:54):
There they believed they hadwon fair and square.
And so they're rewarding theseplots of lands with the
stipulation that people need tohave apple trees on it
especially.
And so we're actuallyinteracting with a very brave
and intelligent character.
You can see the writing on thewall and says in another
decade's time, the hottest itemon the market is about to be
(07:16):
apples.
So if I'm there first and I'mplanting before everyone else,
guess who's going to need me?
Everyone.
So essentially, the large bigpicture of Johnny Appleseed in
the legend does take place inOhio.
He spent about 20 to 30 yearsof his life circulating around
the Ohio area.
It's debatable about whether ornot he jumped over into the
(07:37):
West Virginia area, into theKentucky area, but he definitely
crossed back and forth in thePittsburgh area, all around Ohio
for 20 to 30 years, hittingabout every corner of the state
before finally, like Ohio'spretty well done, and he moves
into the Indiana area and hedoesn't make it very far before
he passes away in Fort Wayne,indiana, March 18, 1845.
(08:00):
So that's sort of a crashcourse in this historical figure
and what you really need toknow is also, along the way he's
not only doing the Apple thing,he is spreading his religion,
swedenborgianism, which Itouched on.
He was introduced to this inthe area of Pittsburgh.
That's another part of him thatgets left behind in the grander
(08:21):
mythos.
If we look at Walt Disney'sbehind in the grander mythos, if
we look at Walt Disney's MelodyTime, which was a short film, a
lot of people recall it likemandala effect, recall it being
a full-length film.
It wasn't, it was just like 18minutes long.
About Johnny Appleseed is.
(08:41):
They touch on the fact thathe's religious, he has a
guardian angel, but theyconveniently sort of neglect to
mention what that religion is orwhat that means to him.
But when we're looking at JohnChapman and studying him, he's
really devout in his religionnot very well understood,
(09:08):
complex religion and introducingit into the state of Ohio and
sort of making it digestible,because Swedenborgianism is a
really complex religion that hadnew ideas.
It was opening a lot of doors,it was very strange, and so he's
planting apple trees and alsobringing the sort of fringe,
strange religion into pockets ofremote Ohio, which is just,
(09:29):
it's just fascinating.
Like I said, it's.
The apple thing is actually notvery interesting at all when we
consider all this.
He was just that was just agood business plan to do apples,
but for some reason that's thething we sort of keep up with in
modern times is like he did thepot hat thing and he had apples
, and the pot hat thing isn'teven true.
Ayla Sparks (09:50):
Wasn't it?
The only record that we reallyhave of that is one person wrote
it down after meeting him atone point.
She was an author and wrote anarticle and put that in the
article and that's whereeveryone else got their
information about the pot hatfrom.
Mikaela Prescott (10:01):
Yeah, so pretty much the pot hat thing is
.
It's very strange.
We sort of track it down.
I have my own theory about this.
This podcast might get peopleruffled.
I don't know.
This is still very hotlydebated in Johnny Appleseed fan
circles.
Is pot hat or not pot hat?
What we do know is he was areally big storyteller.
(10:23):
There are many records where heloved interacting with kids and
telling them stories about thewilderness and all of his
adventures and sort of doinganything he could to get them to
laugh giving them ribbons forhis hair, poking his feet with
needles just to sort ofentertain them.
It is incredibly possible atone point in time he put a pot
(10:43):
on his head and and for somereason that's the thing that
sticks.
But when we're actually lookingat, like, oh, this is what he
was doing all the time, I'm sosorry to report that like we
don't really have any record ofthat.
The only record we have whenthey talk about his headgear is
Rosella Rice, who's a girlliving in the Mansfield Ohio
area.
She knew Johnny quite well.
(11:04):
He planted for her grandparentsand her parents, so he was
living on their property for agood number of years.
She talks about him wearing apasteboard hat, which is similar
modern idea cardboard, and whatshe describes is actually kind
of the modern day baseball hat.
So in my mind it's actually waymore interesting to think about
this character in the early1800s wearing a baseball cap
(11:29):
that he made, but I'm not theone who got to decide which part
stuck.
It would bring a lot moreimages to mind when we think
about this pot hat, but probablynot true.
This is something that justgets said sort of offhanded once
and then gets passed aroundforever in the course of the
legend.
People are trying to find waysto make that make sense and sort
(11:51):
of rationalize it.
He wore a pot on his headbecause he was kicked in the
head by a horse when he wasyoung and this was something
about trepanning, holding hisbrain together.
Well, he was wearing the tin poton his head to protect his head
from apples that were fallingin the orchard.
If he's planting them from seed, he's probably not spending a
whole lot of time getting hit inthe head with apples.
Well, it keeps the sun out ofhis eyes.
(12:13):
If that pot on the head is whatmakes someone remember love,
invest in and uplift thishistory, then you can keep your
pot hat Like.
If that's the thing that ittakes to get you interested in
history, and local historyespecially, then keep it.
Ayla Sparks (12:31):
That's fine.
Chapman himself he wasobviously a missionary, he was a
nurseryman or a portraitist.
Maybe we could even say he wasreally really big into nature, a
conservationist.
He was also a vegetarian.
Mikaela Prescott (12:45):
Okay, so this is another one of those tricky
traps that sort of is confusing.
So when we're talking aboutconservationist, we sort of have
to wonder what that means andwe sort of we have the duty of
always meeting people wherethey're at when looking at
biographical figures as peoplein their era and of their time.
One of these challenges, whenwe sort of label him a
(13:07):
conservationist and we thinkabout our 21st century idea of
you know, chain yourself to theoak tree on campus so they don't
cut it down.
You know, recycle all yourplastics and your aluminum cans
and turn off your water, and notreally.
Chapman actually makes a lot ofmoney on the side logging for
people, because this was one ofthe things you needed to do to
(13:27):
claim your land was makingimprovements, which was sort of
a big catch-all term, and one ofthe ways you could achieve that
goal is clearing out old growthforests for your orchards and
for cattle, making fences,things like this.
So when we're talking aboutconservationists, it's really
dangerous to lump him into thatidea of world-class
environmentalist by today'sstandards.
(13:49):
But if we want to speak abouthim as a figure who he's not
interested in building apartmentcomplexes in the woods if
that's what we're talking abouthe meets that bare minimum
quality and he isn't interestedin indigenous warfare, he's not
interested in seeing indigenouspeople removed from their lands.
He is a vegetarian asterisk,which is to say he was eating
(14:12):
what people offered him.
So if he was offered ye oldburger, ye old timey burger, he
would eat it.
But he wasn't known for goinghunting on his own.
We know he bought a gun.
We know he bought gunpowder.
We have receipts that provethis.
But we also have thesefirsthand accounts that date to
(14:35):
him saying you know, well, Ihave to have a gun because I'm
walking around in the woods.
But he didn't feel like he hadthe liberty to take the life of
a creature.
It goes back to those verystrict religious beliefs.
He believed that God was ineverything, and that included
animals, which meant he didn'treally feel like it was his
(14:56):
decision or call to go huntingand take the life of something
if God intended for thatcreature to be wild and free and
living.
So conservationist by modernday standards maybe not, but
still sort of anachronisticwithin his own time period and
people's understanding.
So therefore unique.
Ayla Sparks (15:15):
Absolutely and it sounds a lot more like
conservationist.
Back then was more of naturelover and nature prefer.
Mikaela Prescott (15:22):
And we again also have to look at that as
like we're looking at all thesedifferent folks motivations to
moving out west, getting theirown land.
It was rough living, it's hardwork, it's sweaty work, it's
heavy labor and it's not foreveryone just as comfortable, if
(15:44):
not more comfortable, with thissort of nomadic lifestyle,
camping out, living in the woods, squatting on lands, living in
people's barns or sheds orcellars for a hot minute.
It is very interesting.
It's like that one friend youhave at college who's always
traveling somehow and you'relike how are you always in a
hostel over in Japan and thennext week camping in
(16:04):
Saskatchewan?
Like, how do you do that?
It does take a very certaininteresting personality, I think
, to be of that sort of betotally at ease even though you
don't have a place to return toat home, sort of no home base.
It is very fascinating to methat he never has a home where
we can say, oh, john Chapmanlived here and here was his
(16:27):
address and here was his house.
He was living with whoever hewas planting for.
He was living with his halfsister and her husband for a
while.
So it is a very interestingperson that I can see why he
would sort of cut a sort offamiliar form that people would
recall him so many years later.
Ayla Sparks (16:43):
I comprehend it Well, in continuing on with this
idea, that we have a lot ofthoughts about Johnny Appleseed
the tin hat and running aroundbarefoot, which apparently he
did run around barefoot, but notbecause he just wanted to feel
the dirt on his feet, he wasjust kind of this you know
conservationist nomad.
But the idea of him just walkingand spitting apple seeds also
(17:04):
is very inaccurate.
As we had mentioned earlier, hewas a nursery man, so the way
that he was able to kind of bean entrepreneur in this new,
burgeoning apple orchard spacewas by creating these nurseries.
How did he go about makingthese successful?
Mikaela Prescott (17:19):
Yeah.
So here's another thing thatpeople leave out of the story.
He is buying and claimingparcels of land in Ohio
especially.
So the way he's getting startedis he's crossing back over into
that Pittsburgh area which iswhere I said he first
encountered the orchardingorchardist sort of hobby or
career path.
(17:39):
We believe we've got itnarrowed down to a location
called Metzgerville, theMetzgerville Cider Press, called
Metzgerville, the MetzgervilleCider Press.
When people are making applecider, you're more or less
crushing and squeezing theseapples into an applesauce
texture and draining the juicefrom it.
What that leaves behind is whatwe call pumice.
(18:00):
It's all the stems and twigsand leaves and skin and cores
and seeds, and so he essentiallystrikes up this deal that he's
like well, you're not going touse the seeds for anything
anyways, give me all thatgarbage.
So he's more or less dumpsterdiving, in a sense that he's
taking all this refuse from thecider making process.
He's literally picking theseeds out of it and then
(18:23):
carrying them back across theborder to this land he's
purchased, planting them thereand returning to Pennsylvania
getting more seeds, planting forsomeone else.
And so when we think about hisjourney and this sort of idea
that it was a really linear pathhe walked?
Not at all.
He's returning to places yearafter year, these orchards that
(18:43):
he is maintaining and keeping atab on, and he's returning
because he needs more seeds,more trees.
He always has to constantly bemoving forward and having those
branch campuses to get morematerial.
That's how he keeps moving west, by returning east from time to
time.
Ayla Sparks (19:01):
Well, and the way that he ended up making some of
his money as well, right was, hewould have this nursery
established for a few years andthen would he sell off chunks of
the nursery, or would heactually like dig up trees and
transport the trees and peoplewould purchase those?
Mikaela Prescott (19:16):
So he would eventually sell a lot of this
land.
Mostly what people wererequesting from him he would
plant from seed, for I believe Ihope I'm not misquoting this a
fit petty bit you could slightlymore expensive.
You could buy an actual whipfrom him which is this like
younger tree, but for the mostpart when he's doing large
(19:39):
orchards further out west he'splanting from seed Apple trees
and apples are notoriously slowgrowers.
These little trees take aboutfour to five years to flower,
another eight to ten beforeyou're getting good apples from
them.
Depending on when people arecoming to their land, their need
for trees might be moreemergent.
So you could pay John Chapman alittle extra and he would bring
(20:02):
you already growing treesrather than planting the seed
for you, already growing treesrather than planting the seed
for you.
We don't necessarily see hisorchards totally dissolve or
turn into mist and smoke, but hedoes like sell off these
parcels of land.
He's constantly buying andselling land.
He'll buy this and he'll plantit and have it for a couple
years and then he'll sell itback off, sort of always
(20:23):
changing hands.
Ayla Sparks (20:24):
When I also read that he didn't do grafting,
which is one of the ways that inmodern times that's how you
shorten how long it takes for anapple tree to actually make
apples.
It makes the process a lotquicker.
But he wasn't a fan of grafting, so instead, the apples that he
was growing, they weren't thesweeter kind of apples, they
were the more tart apples thatreally you would only use to
(20:45):
make alcohol.
And so this article was callinghim the American Dionysus,
because really he was not justsupplying apples, it was more of
he was supplying alcohol to theAmerican West.
Is there any reality to that?
Mikaela Prescott (20:59):
Yeah, absolutely so.
I'll break this down into acouple of different hot points
here.
At first and foremost, peoplewill say oh, he didn't graft
because of his religion.
His religion was so bizarrethey wouldn't let him graft
because that would be liketampering in God's domain.
That's not really true.
He didn't graft, but that's thereason was probably not
(21:21):
religiously motivated.
It's a very good explanation.
That's a.
It's a great stab at anexplanation.
Most likely we're looking atmore convenience.
If you've got to plant 100trees dozens of miles away,
would you rather drag 100 babytrees with you or an envelope
full of apple seeds?
The large purpose behindgrafting today is so you can
(21:42):
grow those sweeter apples.
Every apple we see at a grocerystore today your Red Delicious,
your Gala, your Pink Lady, yourHoneycrisp, your Jazz Apple,
your Cosmic Crisp those are allmore or less clones of one
another.
They are.
You get a tree you really likehow it turned out and you're
grafting.
You're cutting off those limbsand basically bandaging them to
what are called rootstock, adifferent type of tree, to trick
(22:05):
that root stalk into growingmore of this kind of apple.
Johnny Appleseed wasn't settingout to plant snacking apples,
like you already sort ofprefaced.
He wasn't setting out to createthe next pink lady apple.
He was planting what we callspitters.
To say an apple is a spitter islike saying a dog in a shelter
is a mutt.
You walk into a dog shelter andyou're like, oh, that looks a
(22:29):
lot like a Labrador mutt.
You walk into a dog shelter andyou're like, oh, that looks a
lot like a Labrador retriever.
And the shelter will be likenope, it's a mutt, because we
can't prove it's a Labrador, sowe're just going to call it a
mutt.
So he's not planting Ramboapples.
He's not planting Granny Smithapples.
Did he have favorite applesthat he liked to eat?
Probably.
But what he's actually plantingare all these like nasty mutt
(22:49):
apples which are more or lesssimilar to a crab apple.
They're sort of oblong, they'resort of green and like they're
sandy and they're really bitterand quite sour.
This is where they get theirname Spitter, because they were
so bitter that you would take abite and want to spit it back
out.
But if what all these applesare being used for is feeding
(23:12):
hogs, making vinegar to can andpreserve your winter stock, or
making alcohol, who cares howthey taste?
And this alcohol thing isanother piece that sort of gets
conveniently scrubbed from thereal history.
A lot of that has to do withJohnny Appleseed's
characterization really becomingpopular in the zeitgeist.
(23:33):
In these 1930s and 40s we'restill very much coming off of
like prohibition and these moralcrusades against alcohol and
how alcohol is evil, so it sortof gets scrubbed out of the
story.
But he's not moonshining.
Johnny Apple Thief's notmoonshining for people.
What he's doing is he'sproviding them apples.
(23:53):
That way they can makealcoholic apple cider.
That way they have somethingsafe to drink.
This is the government's bigplan of why they're telling
people you've got to plantapples.
You've got to plant apples.
You've got to plant applesbecause they want people to have
something to drink.
This is when I'm talking about.
We have our tours teaching themhow we're doing history and
putting the pieces togetherusing critical thinking.
(24:16):
It's like everyone can turn onthe tap at their house and drink
it.
It might not taste good ifyou're on well water or
something, but you're probablynot going to die from it.
In Johnny Appleseed's day,dysentery is a huge killer.
You know, if you want wateryou're going to a local stream
and you're really hoping thatyou're upstream of the farmer
(24:39):
who has his cows peeing andpooping in that same stream.
You're safer to drink alcoholthan you are water at this point
.
So everyone needs a little bitof alcohol just to stay safe and
hydrated.
When we're talking about theirscrubbing this part of the story
out, we don't want him to bethis American Dionysus.
(24:59):
We don't want him to bringalcohol to the West.
We don't want him bringingthese impurities to these
beautiful pioneers who areaccomplishing manifest destiny.
It's misconstrued by our modernunderstandings of alcohol and
alcoholism and we sort of havetossed out and forgotten how
imperative having something safeto drink is.
When we don't have bureaucraticentities monitoring waterways
(25:22):
and water systems and makingsure things are safe to drink,
how important it is that someonedoes have something safe to
drink at that time.
So it's kind of a shame that itgets left out of the story.
But there's been like areinvigorated interest in like
wait a second, was JohnnyAppleseed kind of the bad boy of
the American West?
Was he moonshining?
Not at all.
He's a very smart businessmanand he sort of sees that writing
(25:45):
on the wall of people are goingto need these apples to make
this cider, that way they cankeep their land and that way
they have something to drink inthe future.
Ayla Sparks (25:52):
Speaking of these immoral acts of bringing alcohol
and just reading from the title, are you talking about?
Mikaela Prescott (25:59):
Conjugial Love yes, okay, so don't feel silly.
This is, I'm about to take youon such a trip with Conjugal
Love.
I'm ready, I'm ready.
Ayla Sparks (26:09):
Okay, it just sounds dirty and I was like I am
very interested in finding outwhat this means.
Mikaela Prescott (26:17):
So this is one of the reasons.
When you go on our website andsee the things we're purporting,
we're like, oh, surely she'sgoing to.
This is curator's choice.
Surely she's going to talkabout you know his Bible.
No, I want to talk about thisbook instead, which is hilarious
.
I actually got so anxiousbecause I was like 100% certain
I knew what I was going to sayand then I was like you know
(26:38):
what?
I've got to call in an expert.
So before we met, I actuallycalled a minister for the
Swedenborgian faith.
I called in some favors to belike hey, I need you to break
this down for me one more time.
So we have this book calledConjugial Love.
To explain it, we have toremember that Johnny Appleseed
was a very devout Swedenborgian.
(27:00):
Swedenborgianism is started bythis guy named Emanuel
Swedenborg, and here's yourcrash course in sort of Emanuel
Swedenborg.
He actually doesn't really like.
He's a theologian, he's sort ofa philosopher, he's an inventor
, he's the son of a minister andhe doesn't really intend to
(27:21):
start a religion, but what hedoes do is write 32 books about
his own religious journey, hisvisions and dreams of religion
and God and whatnot, and one ofthese books is Conjugial Love,
and this is why I wanted totouch on this book.
I find it fascinating becausethis copy we have is printed in
(27:44):
1796.
So it's actually quite a bitearlier of a text.
But this is, you know, anAmerican version, copied in
English, 1796.
And it's kind of buck wild forits time period.
Conjugial love in the broadeststrokes is Immanuel Swedenborg's
(28:06):
idea about marriage and loveand oh goodness how man and
women being married and sort ofbeing together, there might come
points in which your wifedoesn't like you very much and
therefore it is good and okay togo get a mistress, just so long
(28:32):
as it's sex.
Only you should not beromantically involved with your
mistress, it should just only besex, because if a man does not
have sex he will get sick anddie.
Now what's also veryinteresting is it's not all bad
news.
He also has these like kind ofprogressive for his time ideas
(28:54):
about women and what women aresupposed to be bringing to a
marriage.
And the act of even having theidea that women might be
bringing something important tomarriage and something important
into the lives of men is kindof novel in of itself.
But it's a really funny book.
It's a very funny book and it'sso interesting to me because in
(29:20):
a modern context so theSwedenborgian faith is very much
around today.
But they experienced a split inthe church in the late 1800s
and essentially there is thegeneral convention side and
there is the general church side.
They couldn't have picked moresimilar names.
The general church side takes avery literal reading of all 32
(29:44):
of Swedenborg's books Veryliteral, do not stray from the
text.
Whereas the general conventionside is like, well, we can sort
of adapt and take guesses atwhat he meant, because he didn't
mean to start a religionanyways.
So you know what's the harm insort of expounding upon this
sort of you know DLC writing ourown fan fiction.
One of these big pieces ofcontention in the Split of the
(30:06):
Church is congeal love.
The general convention side islooking at the general church
side and they're like how do youtake this book literally?
It's crazy, it's this insanebook.
It's 230, it's, it's, it's thisinsane book, it's 230.
(30:26):
This 230 year old book is 521pages originally.
So all of Swedenborg's worksare largely penned in Latin.
So all of these Englishtranslations aren't quite
perfect either.
So even in translating it toEnglish there's a lot of hotly
contested.
Now you're trying to say wehave to take everything he says
literally.
But you're already not takingit literally because you sort of
had to translate it and there'simperfect translations.
(30:48):
And so this book is reallyhotly contested and it's still
hotly contested today.
The woman I was speaking with,reverend Rosalind Taylor.
She started an entire women'sgroup within Swedenborgian
circles.
One of their main goals is sortof how do we handle this really
antiquated book from theperspective of a woman?
(31:08):
Because I think what's reallykey in Swedenborgianism, what
also sets it apart from otherreligions, is, especially at the
time, is the Swedenborgbelieved if you had a marriage
that was right and good, youwould keep being married in
(31:28):
heaven.
As a non-religious person I waslike, okay, what does that mean?
But there's also a lot ofdenominations, that sort of
argue.
There are no marriages inheaven.
That bureaucracy doesn't followus.
So Swedenborg, who's,interestingly enough, writing
this book about his expertise inreligion and marriage and how
it works together and howimportant it is from both the
man's perspective and thewoman's perspective, has a
(31:50):
bachelor.
He himself never marries, buthe's like writing this marriage
self-help advice book, whichit's so fascinating to me when
we're thinking about, like Iknow, how you can keep your
marriage in heaven.
Take my word for it A guy whonever marries is just
fascinating in and of itself.
Ayla Sparks (32:10):
And isn't Chapman himself a lifelong bachelor?
He never marries.
He never marries.
Mikaela Prescott (32:14):
So there's a sort of understanding that he
did intend to get married at onepoint, but that gets called off
for whatever the reason.
She was considerably youngerthan him and it's believed that,
like their marriage was sort ofcontingent or sort of a deal
that was brokered between, youknow, her father and work
Chapman was doing and eventuallywhat becomes of it is this girl
(32:36):
falls in love with a boy herown age and John Chapman's.
Like I don't really have aninterest in getting involved in
this drama, but you know we alsothink about why no wife, why no
kids, and it's like well, nohouse, you're not quite a hot
catch if you're like, hey, babe,want to be my wife and have my
kids and, by the way, I'm alwaysgoing to be walking around
(32:56):
barefoot forever all across thestates and I probably won't see
you.
He never gets married but hedoes have this belief, following
Swedenborg's writings, thatlike I'll probably have a wife
in heaven, I'm going to bemarried in heaven.
He probably wasn't reallyfeeling the pressure to go get
married and have kids because inhis mind and his worldview he's
like I've got all the time inthe world, I'll just be married
(33:18):
in heaven Easy.
Ayla Sparks (33:20):
How did you guys come across this book so?
Mikaela Prescott (33:23):
this book.
I don't actually know where itcomes from, but I know why we
kept it.
This was printed specificallyby Francis Bailey in
Philadelphia.
Francis Bailey is one of thefirst new churchmen converts in
America.
He's a historically importantbut unsung figure.
(33:44):
He's actually the printer forthe Continental Congress but on
the side he's printing thisSwedenborgian material and he's
really into his faith and that'ssuper cool and he's a neighbor
of Benjamin Franklin and theyhave these reading circles that
you know what a group of oddducks I have to imagine is like
(34:09):
Francis Bailey, printer of theContinental Congress, and like
Benjamin Franklin, sittingaround translating Latin books
about ghosts and spiritualityfrom this mystic over in Europe
who accidentally started areligion.
Gosh to be a fly on the wallfor that.
What's so fascinating aboutthis copy being printed by
(34:30):
Francis Bailey is it actuallystarts with a disclaimer.
I have the disclaimer if youwant me to read it, I printed
out so much stuff.
Okay.
So you open the book and it'sactually in great condition
because it's published 1796, 54years later there's a note
someone wrote in the front coverthat says hey, I love this book
so much that I rebound it.
(34:51):
So it's in great conditionbecause someone rebound it in
the 1850s.
You open it up and there's thisapology on the title page,
called Preliminary Observations,by the Translator.
It says the translator wouldnot have taken the liberty thus
to introduce a new expressionand supplant an old one without
what appeared to him asufficient reason and such as
(35:13):
will justify him in the opinionof discerning readers.
His reason is this that theauthor himself constantly uses
the Latin term conjugial inpreference to conjugal, which,
when yet the latter term isequally classical and appears
alike expressive.
And that the author did thisintentionally and not of caprice
(35:34):
is evident from thisconsideration that in one
particular passage, it is hopedthis will be thought a
sufficient apology for thetranslator's following his
example on account of itssuperior softness and
expressiveness.
So it's fascinating to me thatwe opened the book and the first
thing is like because, likevery modern preemptive damage
(35:57):
control of like hey, before anyof you get in the comments, just
know I had a reason for sort ofmistranslating this or that,
because Latin is hard.
So deal with it.
It's kind of hilarious.
What's also very interestingabout this is I love Francis
Bailey.
(36:17):
I've got like a historicalcrush on him.
I think he's so cool, he'sreally popular.
His printing press is goinggreat.
We also know it starts to loseits popularity.
One of the reasons is becausehe switches from sort of
publishing all of these likeContinental Congress and
patriotic things about the newworld to doing pretty much only
Swedenborgian materials.
(36:38):
Swedenborgianism is a prettyfringe religion at this point.
So he falls into this nichecategory where he's not printing
anything like that people arereally reading anymore.
He's got a few smallercustomers and that's it.
What's really interesting aboutthis artifact is it has a swash
(36:59):
letter.
A swash letter is a letterstylized in print and what it
has is sort of it looks like theintegral system, which is this
like long, curly F shape, butwithout the crossbar.
This is called the medial S.
The S we use today is the roundS.
(37:21):
The round S is still used.
It's in the end of words, solike hers round S.
But they'll still use thismedial S at the beginning of
words and before hyphens, and sobefore the 18th century that's
super standard practice.
Reading any document it lookslike it says like both sephol
(37:44):
and it's like that's so special.
They just were using this likesilly emoji for some reason.
Well, it sort of dissolvesbecause of the development of
something called the Caslontypeface.
So 1722, there is the Caslontypeface.
And when I say Caslon typefacewe're sort of talking about like
ye olde Times New Roman orAriel, like this is the font you
(38:08):
want everything to be writtenin, because that's proper and
professional, and that includesour Declaration of Independence
is actually printed in Caslontypeface.
Ayla Sparks (38:16):
Oh, wow.
Mikaela Prescott (38:17):
And by 1796, all of Caslon's new typefaces
don't have this medial S anymore.
They've gotten rid of it.
It's no longer the standardpractice.
So when Caslon font becomes themost acceptable font, any
printer worth their salt isgoing to go out as quickly as
(38:37):
they can and buy the new stampsfrom the Caslon collection.
By the mid-1790s Caslon fontsare no longer using the medial S
.
Your documents shouldn't havethe medialS either, sort of
dissolving.
But 1796, this first edition ofConjugial Love is printed and it
(38:58):
does have the medial S.
What does this tell us aboutthe state of the super popular,
successful printing press?
They're printing all thispatriotic material.
He's in the same readingcircles as Benjamin Franklin and
then a couple years later we'resort of led to believe either
he's lost track of the hot newtypefaces or can he not afford
(39:22):
the new typefaces.
What does that tell us withouttelling us anything about the
state of Bailey's printing press?
One of the most important booksto him personally, he's
printing with outdated typefaces.
I think is really interesting.
But that's something that whenyou approached me about the
podcast, I was like oh, is thismy chance to talk about our copy
(39:44):
of Conchuchula?
Ayla Sparks (39:44):
Exactly.
This is my opportunity AmazingWell and the other opportunity
that you took.
I'm also very interested inSpoon or spoon.
Mikaela Prescott (39:54):
Tell me about the spoon.
This is another thing that ourwhole job as curators sort of
contextualize the items we'reputting out to make people care
about it, to make peopleinteract with it.
It's six and a half inches longand it's a pewter teaspoon.
The bowl of the spoon, whichyou'd actually eat off of, is
sort of like dippled andsculpted into this carving of an
(40:16):
apple tree Right off the bat.
That tells us a story.
This item was never meant to beused for eating.
So, moving forward, what doesthat leave us with?
And my mind immediately goes tonot so much our generation, not
so much my parents' generation,but a lot of people I know's
grandparents.
Ayla Sparks (40:33):
My grandma had three cases in our kitchen of
all different spoons.
Mikaela Prescott (40:39):
There was very much a time and era where
people were collecting uselessspoons and it was like a
cultural resurgence and likeeverybody's grandma was
collecting spoons.
So we're led to believe this islike a collector's spoon.
But what are they collecting itfor?
So I sort of get into the sortof theory behind the phrase.
(41:00):
They were born with a silverspoon in their mouth.
Where does that come from?
And the most notable spoon inEngland being the coronation
spoon, of course, 1603,coronation of King James I.
It's a literal spoon whichholds holy water and the
archbishop dips his finger intoit to anoint the king.
Wonderful.
Now, culturally speaking, we'relooking at 17th century England.
(41:23):
Silverware doesn't come inuntil the 1700s.
If you're going to dinner withsomeone, you're sort of expected
to bring your own, like messkit, pretty much so when we're
talking about spoons and they'resort of, therefore, a status
symbol attached to spoons.
If you're going to dinner witha noble family and you're
expected to bring your ownspoons, this is your chance to
(41:43):
show off that you've got goodspoons, bring out the fine china
.
Exactly.
You're bringing your fine chinamess kit to your buddy's house
and so you would bring spoonsthat were like pewter was your
upper middle class and silverindicated you were really
wealthy because you could affordto bring your mess kit made out
of silver to your buddy's house.
And then they become moreintricate and this sort of goes
(42:05):
along with the archbishop andthe coronation is.
They sort of start coming outwith apostille spoons, which are
spoons which on the handle oron the bowl shows a picture of
one of the apostles, and thenthat sort of evolves into saint
spoons.
And then the time frame getskind of hazy.
So some people are sort ofciting that these spoons become
popular gifts in the late 1400sand that tradition dies out
(42:28):
around the mid 1600s, but othersare claiming it sort of carries
on into the 20th century and,as your grandma can attest, some
people are still very much intothese collector's spoons.
Regardless, it becomes apractice that when a child is
baptized they should be gifted asilver or pewter spoon, usually
by like a godparent, in orderto set them on the right path in
(42:52):
life.
What's really interesting aboutthese spoons is we're talking
about apostille spoons, we'retalking about Saint spoons.
We have a Johnny Appleseedspoon and so I sort of compared
it to a 1490 spoon that the Methas in their collection and the
Met has basically gone back andforth like we think it's like
1490 and we're pretty surethat's supposed to be Saint Jude
(43:13):
on top, and our spoon is kindof almost identical to this
spoon but it's Johnny Appleseedon the top, which is just
fascinating to me because we'retalking about this character and
his folklore and who he is andwhat he's become.
We're sort of brushing intothis hazy area of like.
The same way we consider saintstoday is, yes, they were real
(43:39):
people, but how literally do wewant to take all of their
miracles?
And for some people that answeris like incredibly literally
and that's awesome.
And for some folks it's likewell, let's take some liberties
here and understand that whenwe're talking about this miracle
, what they probably meant washe didn't walk 200 miles.
(43:59):
They probably meant he walkedlike 20.
It's sort of that walking backand finding the truth in the
detail.
This is not the first timeJohnny Appleseed is elevated to
this idea of this like sainthood.
Someone does call him thepatron saint of American
orchards, Neil Gaiman is callinghim an American god, and you
(44:20):
yourself have cited an articlewhich is very popular, sort of
equates him to an AmericanDionysus.
This is not the first or lasttime that Johnny Appleseed would
be sort of like looked at withthat raised eyebrow, and so it's
such a little artifact.
But I believe that littleartifacts can also tell really
big stories without sayinganything.
(44:40):
I find this spoon fascinating.
Ayla Sparks (44:43):
Oh well, it's a very special spoon, so it worked
out great, thank you.
You guys must do some prettyfun events at the museum, I'm
guessing too.
Mikaela Prescott (44:53):
So it's a bit of a loaded question there.
So we have the museum and,historically speaking, our
museum is operating under theumbrella of Urbana University.
So all of these events and allthis stuff was sort of also
working with the college.
And then the COVID-19 pandemichits and Urbana University
(45:13):
permanently closes.
That leaves our museum, whichis staffed by the college and
run by, like college interns, onone of the college campus
buildings.
We're sort of in a lurch.
We buy a building, we goindependent, which was crazy,
but it's obviously worked outfor us, which is wonderful.
But so this is our first sortof we're staring down the barrel
(45:35):
at our first year operating byexciting.
It's been so rewarding.
But this September especially Ithink I said at the top this
would be his 250th birthday.
So, as you can imagine, mySeptember calendar is crazy and
we're just trying to.
Right now we're sort of workingon ingratiating ourselves with
(45:56):
different school age groups,bringing in a lot of kids and
that hands-on experience,because I don't want other
future kids to have the sameidea of John Chapman that I did,
which is like Johnny Appleseedthat's the guy who gets me out
of math class sort ofintroducing the importance of
John Chapman.
And this year especially, we'resort of trying to get involved
(46:18):
with all these different eventsand festivals and Johnny
Appleseed hot spots, so hisbirthday is on the 28th, which
is a Saturday.
Our town where we're located,urbana Ohio, does a cupola
parade and chili cook-off.
We are also throwing JohnnyAppleseed a birthday on that day
.
We're going to be in the paradeand a lot of people are, like
(46:38):
you know, have their chili andgoing out.
We're inviting them to come tothe museum, hang out.
We've got these beautiful yards, this beautiful side yard,
beautiful backyard.
We have a Johnny Appleseeddescendant orchard.
Come see our nasty littleapples, come sit in our grass,
Come watch the deer, you know,party it up with us and
celebrate this guy who's kind of, for all intents and purposes,
(47:02):
withstands the test of time.
We're hoping next year 2025, wecan set a more predictable
schedule of events like museumsall across the nation.
That's our annual this and ourannual that, but we're still
really new to this whole space.
Ayla Sparks (47:15):
Well, it sounds like you guys are well on your
way and I'm excited to see whereyou guys take it.
And thank you so much formeeting with me and being
willing to share the true JohnnyChapman apple seed.
Mikaela Prescott (47:28):
Oh, thank you so much for having me.
This was really, this wasreally a delight.
Ayla Sparks (47:32):
Thank you so much for tuning in and supporting
Curator's Choice, a Mighty OakMedia production.
If you enjoyed the show, pleaseconsider subscribing and rating
the show on Apple Podcasts,spotify, youtube or wherever you
get your podcasts.
If you love a museum and wouldlike to hear it featured in an
episode, shoot me a message atcuratorschoicepodcast at
(47:54):
gmailcom.
I'll do my best to reach outand see if I can get them to be
on the show.
You can also view articles,artifacts and more by following
us on Facebook and Instagram.
Thanks for listening toCurator's Choice, a podcast for
history nerds and museum lovers.
the apples that he was growing.
They weren't the sweeter kindof apples, they were the more
tart apples that really youwould only use to make alcohol.
And so this article was callinghim the American Dionysus,
because really he was not justsupplying apples, it was more of
he was supplying alcohol to theAmerican West.
Is there any reality to that?
(00:20):
Hi, I'm Ayla Sparks, and thisis Curator's Choice, a podcast
for history nerds and museumlovers.
From ancient relics to modernmarvels, each episode of this
show features a new museum and acurator's choice of some
amazing artifacts housed there.
These guardians of history willshare insights, anecdotes and
(00:41):
the often untold stories thatbreathe life into the artifacts
they protect.
Thanks for tuning in to thisMighty Oak Media production and
enjoy the show.
Hello and welcome to anotherepisode of Curator's Choice.
Today on the show, we're at theJohnny Appleseed Education
Center and Museum in Urbana,ohio.
With Michaela Prescott as ourguide, we'll be exploring the
(01:03):
man, the possible myths and theapple legend himself, john
Chapman.
Join us as we explore the lifeof this apple orchard
entrepreneur and his oftenomitted missionary work, done in
the name of the Swedenborgianfaith.
Who was he really?
Tin hat or no?
(01:24):
Tin hat, barefoot man walkingthrough the woods or
brilliant-minded appleorchardist.
A small disclaimer for thisepisode a historical text will
be discussed which includesmention of certain conjugal
relations.
So listener discretion isadvised.
So without further ado, let'sjump right in with Mikayla.
(01:46):
Have you always been in lovewith Johnny Appleseed?
Mikaela Prescott (01:50):
Oh, absolutely not so.
I grew up in the centralPennsylvania area, so Johnny
Appleseed was a thing, but hisexistence was pretty much.
We had a Johnny Appleseed dayin school growing up, I remember
having one of those.
Yeah, what that equated to waswe got to eat sliced apples and
(02:10):
peanut butter, and we usuallydid a craft where, like, we
colored in the tin pot hat andstapled it to like a headband.
That was it.
He was never contextualizedbeyond that.
This is like my favorite thing.
When we get tours in, I alwaysask them what feels like dumb
questions have you ever heard ofhim?
You know those sorts of things.
And more and more I'm seeingespecially like younger groups
(02:32):
are like oh, he's not a realperson.
And then they get reallyembarrassed and I'm like no,
he's a real person.
Ayla Sparks (02:49):
And part of that for me is I like to soothe their
fears and be like I did notknow he was a real person until
I was in college.
But to be fair, I mean JohnnyAppleseed really is kind of.
He's got like a real myth andlegend aura about him.
Right, a tin saucepan on hishead running around planting
seeds in the American ManifestDestiny, like it just seems like
it would fit really well thatit's one of our urban legends.
Mikaela Prescott (03:02):
Yeah, he does fit super well within urban
legends.
He's even gone so far as, inthe book American Gods by Neil
Gaiman, he's mentioned, amongstother gods of antiquity, as like
an American god as a member ofour religious ranks.
That adds fuel to the fire inthis sort of idea that he's not
(03:22):
a real person, especially whenhe's getting categorized with
Paul Bunyan.
Was Paul Bunyan real?
I'm sure there was a cool guyat some point who was really
strong and did cut down trees.
Did he have a blue ox?
Was he pulling up railroads orwhatever he was doing?
Don't ruin this for me, butJohnny Appleseed gets lumped
(03:43):
into that same category for me,but Johnny Appleseed gets lumped
into that same category.
The largest part of what we doin the museum is sort of
untangling, that we're not asconcerned with forcing people to
remember.
Johnny Appleseed's real namewas John Chapman.
He was born September 26, 1770.
We're not as concerned withpeople remembering those hard
dates and sacks so much as wereally want them to go to the
museum and leave with a betterunderstanding of how history
(04:07):
gets done, using those criticalthinking skills.
When I tell you you know thesource of this story, this thing
we've always believed came fromsomeone who was seven years old
.
How does that frame yourunderstanding of this source?
Are you sure you want to trustit the whole way?
So that's sort of our biggergoal in our education less to
make you memorize his siblings'names and memorize every town he
(04:30):
stopped in, so much as okay.
So why did I come here thinkingthis wasn't a real person and
how can I sort of use myknowledge better in the future?
How did we go from this guy whowas very much of his life and
times and era and an incredibleperson?
But the apple thing is reallysort of the least interesting
thing about him to that's ahundred years after his death in
(04:53):
the 1930s and 40s, there's asudden explosion in interest of
this homeless vagabond, no shoes, throwing apple seeds, pet wolf
pot hat.
He just sort of comes out ofnowhere.
A hundred years after his death, suddenly, overnight, he goes
from being no one to being thisfolk hero.
Ayla Sparks (05:11):
It's really rewarding.
Well, so now that we'veestablished he absolutely
existed and at one point in timehe was a seven-year-old and a
14-year-old and a 30-year-old.
So who was Johnny Appleseed?
Brief history of this guy'slife.
Mikaela Prescott (05:26):
Yeah, I'll run you through like the most bare
bones crash course.
So, johnny Appleseed, real nameJohn Chapman.
He's born September 26th 1774in Lemonster, massachusetts.
That makes, at the time ofrecording this.
Next month would have been his250th birthday.
Oh wow.
He's born to his motherElizabeth and his father
(05:47):
Nathaniel.
His mother dies when he's veryyoung.
His father remarries, has abunch more kids, and so John
Chaffman, being a bit, you know,not quite involved with the
family at this point, as a youngman, goes to Pennsylvania, he
leaves Massachusetts and hewalks through New York and into
Pennsylvania.
Most importantly, he stops inthe Pittsburgh area and this is
(06:10):
where he learns the two sort ofpillars of his personhood, which
is he learns the trade oforcharding and he learns about
his Swedenborgian religion.
This is where he's sort ofintroduced to his religion,
religion.
This is where he's sort ofintroduced to his religion.
Now, when we're talking aboutthis character everybody knows
and loves, we come away withthis idea that he just eats
apples because he likes them andhe's spitting seeds and doesn't
(06:31):
realize there's a forestgrowing behind him everywhere he
goes.
Not at all.
He was very deliberate.
He was incredibly deliberate.
He was actually a quiteintelligent businessman when we
consider the US governmentessentially is saying hey,
soldiers, we can't pay you withmoney, but what we can pay you
with is all this territory wejust won, again in loose quotes.
(06:54):
There they believed they hadwon fair and square.
And so they're rewarding theseplots of lands with the
stipulation that people need tohave apple trees on it
especially.
And so we're actuallyinteracting with a very brave
and intelligent character.
You can see the writing on thewall and says in another
decade's time, the hottest itemon the market is about to be
(07:16):
apples.
So if I'm there first and I'mplanting before everyone else,
guess who's going to need me?
Everyone.
So essentially, the large bigpicture of Johnny Appleseed in
the legend does take place inOhio.
He spent about 20 to 30 yearsof his life circulating around
the Ohio area.
It's debatable about whether ornot he jumped over into the
(07:37):
West Virginia area, into theKentucky area, but he definitely
crossed back and forth in thePittsburgh area, all around Ohio
for 20 to 30 years, hittingabout every corner of the state
before finally, like Ohio'spretty well done, and he moves
into the Indiana area and hedoesn't make it very far before
he passes away in Fort Wayne,indiana, March 18, 1845.
(08:00):
So that's sort of a crashcourse in this historical figure
and what you really need toknow is also, along the way he's
not only doing the Apple thing,he is spreading his religion,
swedenborgianism, which Itouched on.
He was introduced to this inthe area of Pittsburgh.
That's another part of him thatgets left behind in the grander
(08:21):
mythos.
If we look at Walt Disney'sbehind in the grander mythos, if
we look at Walt Disney's MelodyTime, which was a short film, a
lot of people recall it likemandala effect, recall it being
a full-length film.
It wasn't, it was just like 18minutes long.
About Johnny Appleseed is.
(08:41):
They touch on the fact thathe's religious, he has a
guardian angel, but theyconveniently sort of neglect to
mention what that religion is orwhat that means to him.
But when we're looking at JohnChapman and studying him, he's
really devout in his religionnot very well understood,
(09:08):
complex religion and introducingit into the state of Ohio and
sort of making it digestible,because Swedenborgianism is a
really complex religion that hadnew ideas.
It was opening a lot of doors,it was very strange, and so he's
planting apple trees and alsobringing the sort of fringe,
strange religion into pockets ofremote Ohio, which is just,
(09:29):
it's just fascinating.
Like I said, it's.
The apple thing is actually notvery interesting at all when we
consider all this.
He was just that was just agood business plan to do apples,
but for some reason that's thething we sort of keep up with in
modern times is like he did thepot hat thing and he had apples
, and the pot hat thing isn'teven true.
Ayla Sparks (09:50):
Wasn't it?
The only record that we reallyhave of that is one person wrote
it down after meeting him atone point.
She was an author and wrote anarticle and put that in the
article and that's whereeveryone else got their
information about the pot hatfrom.
Mikaela Prescott (10:01):
Yeah, so pretty much the pot hat thing is
.
It's very strange.
We sort of track it down.
I have my own theory about this.
This podcast might get peopleruffled.
I don't know.
This is still very hotlydebated in Johnny Appleseed fan
circles.
Is pot hat or not pot hat?
What we do know is he was areally big storyteller.
(10:23):
There are many records where heloved interacting with kids and
telling them stories about thewilderness and all of his
adventures and sort of doinganything he could to get them to
laugh giving them ribbons forhis hair, poking his feet with
needles just to sort ofentertain them.
It is incredibly possible atone point in time he put a pot
(10:43):
on his head and and for somereason that's the thing that
sticks.
But when we're actually lookingat, like, oh, this is what he
was doing all the time, I'm sosorry to report that like we
don't really have any record ofthat.
The only record we have whenthey talk about his headgear is
Rosella Rice, who's a girlliving in the Mansfield Ohio
area.
She knew Johnny quite well.
(11:04):
He planted for her grandparentsand her parents, so he was
living on their property for agood number of years.
She talks about him wearing apasteboard hat, which is similar
modern idea cardboard, and whatshe describes is actually kind
of the modern day baseball hat.
So in my mind it's actually waymore interesting to think about
this character in the early1800s wearing a baseball cap
(11:29):
that he made, but I'm not theone who got to decide which part
stuck.
It would bring a lot moreimages to mind when we think
about this pot hat, but probablynot true.
This is something that justgets said sort of offhanded once
and then gets passed aroundforever in the course of the
legend.
People are trying to find waysto make that make sense and sort
(11:51):
of rationalize it.
He wore a pot on his headbecause he was kicked in the
head by a horse when he wasyoung and this was something
about trepanning, holding hisbrain together.
Well, he was wearing the tin poton his head to protect his head
from apples that were fallingin the orchard.
If he's planting them from seed, he's probably not spending a
whole lot of time getting hit inthe head with apples.
Well, it keeps the sun out ofhis eyes.
(12:13):
If that pot on the head is whatmakes someone remember love,
invest in and uplift thishistory, then you can keep your
pot hat Like.
If that's the thing that ittakes to get you interested in
history, and local historyespecially, then keep it.
Ayla Sparks (12:31):
That's fine.
Chapman himself he wasobviously a missionary, he was a
nurseryman or a portraitist.
Maybe we could even say he wasreally really big into nature, a
conservationist.
He was also a vegetarian.
Mikaela Prescott (12:45):
Okay, so this is another one of those tricky
traps that sort of is confusing.
So when we're talking aboutconservationist, we sort of have
to wonder what that means andwe sort of we have the duty of
always meeting people wherethey're at when looking at
biographical figures as peoplein their era and of their time.
One of these challenges, whenwe sort of label him a
(13:07):
conservationist and we thinkabout our 21st century idea of
you know, chain yourself to theoak tree on campus so they don't
cut it down.
You know, recycle all yourplastics and your aluminum cans
and turn off your water, and notreally.
Chapman actually makes a lot ofmoney on the side logging for
people, because this was one ofthe things you needed to do to
(13:27):
claim your land was makingimprovements, which was sort of
a big catch-all term, and one ofthe ways you could achieve that
goal is clearing out old growthforests for your orchards and
for cattle, making fences,things like this.
So when we're talking aboutconservationists, it's really
dangerous to lump him into thatidea of world-class
environmentalist by today'sstandards.
(13:49):
But if we want to speak abouthim as a figure who he's not
interested in building apartmentcomplexes in the woods if
that's what we're talking abouthe meets that bare minimum
quality and he isn't interestedin indigenous warfare, he's not
interested in seeing indigenouspeople removed from their lands.
He is a vegetarian asterisk,which is to say he was eating
(14:12):
what people offered him.
So if he was offered ye oldburger, ye old timey burger, he
would eat it.
But he wasn't known for goinghunting on his own.
We know he bought a gun.
We know he bought gunpowder.
We have receipts that provethis.
But we also have thesefirsthand accounts that date to
(14:35):
him saying you know, well, Ihave to have a gun because I'm
walking around in the woods.
But he didn't feel like he hadthe liberty to take the life of
a creature.
It goes back to those verystrict religious beliefs.
He believed that God was ineverything, and that included
animals, which meant he didn'treally feel like it was his
(14:56):
decision or call to go huntingand take the life of something
if God intended for thatcreature to be wild and free and
living.
So conservationist by modernday standards maybe not, but
still sort of anachronisticwithin his own time period and
people's understanding.
So therefore unique.
Ayla Sparks (15:15):
Absolutely and it sounds a lot more like
conservationist.
Back then was more of naturelover and nature prefer.
Mikaela Prescott (15:22):
And we again also have to look at that as
like we're looking at all thesedifferent folks motivations to
moving out west, getting theirown land.
It was rough living, it's hardwork, it's sweaty work, it's
heavy labor and it's not foreveryone just as comfortable, if
(15:44):
not more comfortable, with thissort of nomadic lifestyle,
camping out, living in the woods, squatting on lands, living in
people's barns or sheds orcellars for a hot minute.
It is very interesting.
It's like that one friend youhave at college who's always
traveling somehow and you'relike how are you always in a
hostel over in Japan and thennext week camping in
(16:04):
Saskatchewan?
Like, how do you do that?
It does take a very certaininteresting personality, I think
, to be of that sort of betotally at ease even though you
don't have a place to return toat home, sort of no home base.
It is very fascinating to methat he never has a home where
we can say, oh, john Chapmanlived here and here was his
(16:27):
address and here was his house.
He was living with whoever hewas planting for.
He was living with his halfsister and her husband for a
while.
So it is a very interestingperson that I can see why he
would sort of cut a sort offamiliar form that people would
recall him so many years later.
Ayla Sparks (16:43):
I comprehend it Well, in continuing on with this
idea, that we have a lot ofthoughts about Johnny Appleseed
the tin hat and running aroundbarefoot, which apparently he
did run around barefoot, but notbecause he just wanted to feel
the dirt on his feet, he wasjust kind of this you know
conservationist nomad.
But the idea of him just walkingand spitting apple seeds also
(17:04):
is very inaccurate.
As we had mentioned earlier, hewas a nursery man, so the way
that he was able to kind of bean entrepreneur in this new,
burgeoning apple orchard spacewas by creating these nurseries.
How did he go about makingthese successful?
Mikaela Prescott (17:19):
Yeah.
So here's another thing thatpeople leave out of the story.
He is buying and claimingparcels of land in Ohio
especially.
So the way he's getting startedis he's crossing back over into
that Pittsburgh area which iswhere I said he first
encountered the orchardingorchardist sort of hobby or
career path.
(17:39):
We believe we've got itnarrowed down to a location
called Metzgerville, theMetzgerville Cider Press, called
Metzgerville, the MetzgervilleCider Press.
When people are making applecider, you're more or less
crushing and squeezing theseapples into an applesauce
texture and draining the juicefrom it.
What that leaves behind is whatwe call pumice.
(18:00):
It's all the stems and twigsand leaves and skin and cores
and seeds, and so he essentiallystrikes up this deal that he's
like well, you're not going touse the seeds for anything
anyways, give me all thatgarbage.
So he's more or less dumpsterdiving, in a sense that he's
taking all this refuse from thecider making process.
He's literally picking theseeds out of it and then
(18:23):
carrying them back across theborder to this land he's
purchased, planting them thereand returning to Pennsylvania
getting more seeds, planting forsomeone else.
And so when we think about hisjourney and this sort of idea
that it was a really linear pathhe walked?
Not at all.
He's returning to places yearafter year, these orchards that
(18:43):
he is maintaining and keeping atab on, and he's returning
because he needs more seeds,more trees.
He always has to constantly bemoving forward and having those
branch campuses to get morematerial.
That's how he keeps moving west, by returning east from time to
time.
Ayla Sparks (19:01):
Well, and the way that he ended up making some of
his money as well, right was, hewould have this nursery
established for a few years andthen would he sell off chunks of
the nursery, or would heactually like dig up trees and
transport the trees and peoplewould purchase those?
Mikaela Prescott (19:16):
So he would eventually sell a lot of this
land.
Mostly what people wererequesting from him he would
plant from seed, for I believe Ihope I'm not misquoting this a
fit petty bit you could slightlymore expensive.
You could buy an actual whipfrom him which is this like
younger tree, but for the mostpart when he's doing large
(19:39):
orchards further out west he'splanting from seed Apple trees
and apples are notoriously slowgrowers.
These little trees take aboutfour to five years to flower,
another eight to ten beforeyou're getting good apples from
them.
Depending on when people arecoming to their land, their need
for trees might be moreemergent.
So you could pay John Chapman alittle extra and he would bring
(20:02):
you already growing treesrather than planting the seed
for you, already growing treesrather than planting the seed
for you.
We don't necessarily see hisorchards totally dissolve or
turn into mist and smoke, but hedoes like sell off these
parcels of land.
He's constantly buying andselling land.
He'll buy this and he'll plantit and have it for a couple
years and then he'll sell itback off, sort of always
(20:23):
changing hands.
Ayla Sparks (20:24):
When I also read that he didn't do grafting,
which is one of the ways that inmodern times that's how you
shorten how long it takes for anapple tree to actually make
apples.
It makes the process a lotquicker.
But he wasn't a fan of grafting, so instead, the apples that he
was growing, they weren't thesweeter kind of apples, they
were the more tart apples thatreally you would only use to
(20:45):
make alcohol.
And so this article was callinghim the American Dionysus,
because really he was not justsupplying apples, it was more of
he was supplying alcohol to theAmerican West.
Is there any reality to that?
Mikaela Prescott (20:59):
Yeah, absolutely so.
I'll break this down into acouple of different hot points
here.
At first and foremost, peoplewill say oh, he didn't graft
because of his religion.
His religion was so bizarrethey wouldn't let him graft
because that would be liketampering in God's domain.
That's not really true.
He didn't graft, but that's thereason was probably not
(21:21):
religiously motivated.
It's a very good explanation.
That's a.
It's a great stab at anexplanation.
Most likely we're looking atmore convenience.
If you've got to plant 100trees dozens of miles away,
would you rather drag 100 babytrees with you or an envelope
full of apple seeds?
The large purpose behindgrafting today is so you can
(21:42):
grow those sweeter apples.
Every apple we see at a grocerystore today your Red Delicious,
your Gala, your Pink Lady, yourHoneycrisp, your Jazz Apple,
your Cosmic Crisp those are allmore or less clones of one
another.
They are.
You get a tree you really likehow it turned out and you're
grafting.
You're cutting off those limbsand basically bandaging them to
what are called rootstock, adifferent type of tree, to trick
(22:05):
that root stalk into growingmore of this kind of apple.
Johnny Appleseed wasn't settingout to plant snacking apples,
like you already sort ofprefaced.
He wasn't setting out to createthe next pink lady apple.
He was planting what we callspitters.
To say an apple is a spitter islike saying a dog in a shelter
is a mutt.
You walk into a dog shelter andyou're like, oh, that looks a
(22:29):
lot like a Labrador mutt.
You walk into a dog shelter andyou're like, oh, that looks a
lot like a Labrador retriever.
And the shelter will be likenope, it's a mutt, because we
can't prove it's a Labrador, sowe're just going to call it a
mutt.
So he's not planting Ramboapples.
He's not planting Granny Smithapples.
Did he have favorite applesthat he liked to eat?
Probably.
But what he's actually plantingare all these like nasty mutt
(22:49):
apples which are more or lesssimilar to a crab apple.
They're sort of oblong, they'resort of green and like they're
sandy and they're really bitterand quite sour.
This is where they get theirname Spitter, because they were
so bitter that you would take abite and want to spit it back
out.
But if what all these applesare being used for is feeding
(23:12):
hogs, making vinegar to can andpreserve your winter stock, or
making alcohol, who cares howthey taste?
And this alcohol thing isanother piece that sort of gets
conveniently scrubbed from thereal history.
A lot of that has to do withJohnny Appleseed's
characterization really becomingpopular in the zeitgeist.
(23:33):
In these 1930s and 40s we'restill very much coming off of
like prohibition and these moralcrusades against alcohol and
how alcohol is evil, so it sortof gets scrubbed out of the
story.
But he's not moonshining.
Johnny Apple Thief's notmoonshining for people.
What he's doing is he'sproviding them apples.
(23:53):
That way they can makealcoholic apple cider.
That way they have somethingsafe to drink.
This is the government's bigplan of why they're telling
people you've got to plantapples.
You've got to plant apples.
You've got to plant applesbecause they want people to have
something to drink.
This is when I'm talking about.
We have our tours teaching themhow we're doing history and
putting the pieces togetherusing critical thinking.
(24:16):
It's like everyone can turn onthe tap at their house and drink
it.
It might not taste good ifyou're on well water or
something, but you're probablynot going to die from it.
In Johnny Appleseed's day,dysentery is a huge killer.
You know, if you want wateryou're going to a local stream
and you're really hoping thatyou're upstream of the farmer
(24:39):
who has his cows peeing andpooping in that same stream.
You're safer to drink alcoholthan you are water at this point
.
So everyone needs a little bitof alcohol just to stay safe and
hydrated.
When we're talking about theirscrubbing this part of the story
out, we don't want him to bethis American Dionysus.
(24:59):
We don't want him to bringalcohol to the West.
We don't want him bringingthese impurities to these
beautiful pioneers who areaccomplishing manifest destiny.
It's misconstrued by our modernunderstandings of alcohol and
alcoholism and we sort of havetossed out and forgotten how
imperative having something safeto drink is.
When we don't have bureaucraticentities monitoring waterways
(25:22):
and water systems and makingsure things are safe to drink,
how important it is that someonedoes have something safe to
drink at that time.
So it's kind of a shame that itgets left out of the story.
But there's been like areinvigorated interest in like
wait a second, was JohnnyAppleseed kind of the bad boy of
the American West?
Was he moonshining?
Not at all.
He's a very smart businessmanand he sort of sees that writing
(25:45):
on the wall of people are goingto need these apples to make
this cider, that way they cankeep their land and that way
they have something to drink inthe future.
Ayla Sparks (25:52):
Speaking of these immoral acts of bringing alcohol
and just reading from the title, are you talking about?
Mikaela Prescott (25:59):
Conjugial Love yes, okay, so don't feel silly.
This is, I'm about to take youon such a trip with Conjugal
Love.
I'm ready, I'm ready.
Ayla Sparks (26:09):
Okay, it just sounds dirty and I was like I am
very interested in finding outwhat this means.
Mikaela Prescott (26:17):
So this is one of the reasons.
When you go on our website andsee the things we're purporting,
we're like, oh, surely she'sgoing to.
This is curator's choice.
Surely she's going to talkabout you know his Bible.
No, I want to talk about thisbook instead, which is hilarious
.
I actually got so anxiousbecause I was like 100% certain
I knew what I was going to sayand then I was like you know
(26:38):
what?
I've got to call in an expert.
So before we met, I actuallycalled a minister for the
Swedenborgian faith.
I called in some favors to belike hey, I need you to break
this down for me one more time.
So we have this book calledConjugial Love.
To explain it, we have toremember that Johnny Appleseed
was a very devout Swedenborgian.
(27:00):
Swedenborgianism is started bythis guy named Emanuel
Swedenborg, and here's yourcrash course in sort of Emanuel
Swedenborg.
He actually doesn't really like.
He's a theologian, he's sort ofa philosopher, he's an inventor
, he's the son of a minister andhe doesn't really intend to
(27:21):
start a religion, but what hedoes do is write 32 books about
his own religious journey, hisvisions and dreams of religion
and God and whatnot, and one ofthese books is Conjugial Love,
and this is why I wanted totouch on this book.
I find it fascinating becausethis copy we have is printed in
(27:44):
1796.
So it's actually quite a bitearlier of a text.
But this is, you know, anAmerican version, copied in
English, 1796.
And it's kind of buck wild forits time period.
Conjugial love in the broadeststrokes is Immanuel Swedenborg's
(28:06):
idea about marriage and loveand oh goodness how man and
women being married and sort ofbeing together, there might come
points in which your wifedoesn't like you very much and
therefore it is good and okay togo get a mistress, just so long
(28:32):
as it's sex.
Only you should not beromantically involved with your
mistress, it should just only besex, because if a man does not
have sex he will get sick anddie.
Now what's also veryinteresting is it's not all bad
news.
He also has these like kind ofprogressive for his time ideas
(28:54):
about women and what women aresupposed to be bringing to a
marriage.
And the act of even having theidea that women might be
bringing something important tomarriage and something important
into the lives of men is kindof novel in of itself.
But it's a really funny book.
It's a very funny book and it'sso interesting to me because in
(29:20):
a modern context so theSwedenborgian faith is very much
around today.
But they experienced a split inthe church in the late 1800s
and essentially there is thegeneral convention side and
there is the general church side.
They couldn't have picked moresimilar names.
The general church side takes avery literal reading of all 32
(29:44):
of Swedenborg's books Veryliteral, do not stray from the
text.
Whereas the general conventionside is like, well, we can sort
of adapt and take guesses atwhat he meant, because he didn't
mean to start a religionanyways.
So you know what's the harm insort of expounding upon this
sort of you know DLC writing ourown fan fiction.
One of these big pieces ofcontention in the Split of the
(30:06):
Church is congeal love.
The general convention side islooking at the general church
side and they're like how do youtake this book literally?
It's crazy, it's this insanebook.
It's 230, it's, it's, it's thisinsane book, it's 230.
(30:26):
This 230 year old book is 521pages originally.
So all of Swedenborg's worksare largely penned in Latin.
So all of these Englishtranslations aren't quite
perfect either.
So even in translating it toEnglish there's a lot of hotly
contested.
Now you're trying to say wehave to take everything he says
literally.
But you're already not takingit literally because you sort of
had to translate it and there'simperfect translations.
(30:48):
And so this book is reallyhotly contested and it's still
hotly contested today.
The woman I was speaking with,reverend Rosalind Taylor.
She started an entire women'sgroup within Swedenborgian
circles.
One of their main goals is sortof how do we handle this really
antiquated book from theperspective of a woman?
(31:08):
Because I think what's reallykey in Swedenborgianism, what
also sets it apart from otherreligions, is, especially at the
time, is the Swedenborgbelieved if you had a marriage
that was right and good, youwould keep being married in
(31:28):
heaven.
As a non-religious person I waslike, okay, what does that mean?
But there's also a lot ofdenominations, that sort of
argue.
There are no marriages inheaven.
That bureaucracy doesn't followus.
So Swedenborg, who's,interestingly enough, writing
this book about his expertise inreligion and marriage and how
it works together and howimportant it is from both the
man's perspective and thewoman's perspective, has a
(31:50):
bachelor.
He himself never marries, buthe's like writing this marriage
self-help advice book, whichit's so fascinating to me when
we're thinking about, like Iknow, how you can keep your
marriage in heaven.
Take my word for it A guy whonever marries is just
fascinating in and of itself.
Ayla Sparks (32:10):
And isn't Chapman himself a lifelong bachelor?
He never marries.
He never marries.
Mikaela Prescott (32:14):
So there's a sort of understanding that he
did intend to get married at onepoint, but that gets called off
for whatever the reason.
She was considerably youngerthan him and it's believed that,
like their marriage was sort ofcontingent or sort of a deal
that was brokered between, youknow, her father and work
Chapman was doing and eventuallywhat becomes of it is this girl
(32:36):
falls in love with a boy herown age and John Chapman's.
Like I don't really have aninterest in getting involved in
this drama, but you know we alsothink about why no wife, why no
kids, and it's like well, nohouse, you're not quite a hot
catch if you're like, hey, babe,want to be my wife and have my
kids and, by the way, I'm alwaysgoing to be walking around
(32:56):
barefoot forever all across thestates and I probably won't see
you.
He never gets married but hedoes have this belief, following
Swedenborg's writings, thatlike I'll probably have a wife
in heaven, I'm going to bemarried in heaven.
He probably wasn't reallyfeeling the pressure to go get
married and have kids because inhis mind and his worldview he's
like I've got all the time inthe world, I'll just be married
(33:18):
in heaven Easy.
Ayla Sparks (33:20):
How did you guys come across this book so?
Mikaela Prescott (33:23):
this book.
I don't actually know where itcomes from, but I know why we
kept it.
This was printed specificallyby Francis Bailey in
Philadelphia.
Francis Bailey is one of thefirst new churchmen converts in
America.
He's a historically importantbut unsung figure.
(33:44):
He's actually the printer forthe Continental Congress but on
the side he's printing thisSwedenborgian material and he's
really into his faith and that'ssuper cool and he's a neighbor
of Benjamin Franklin and theyhave these reading circles that
you know what a group of oddducks I have to imagine is like
(34:09):
Francis Bailey, printer of theContinental Congress, and like
Benjamin Franklin, sittingaround translating Latin books
about ghosts and spiritualityfrom this mystic over in Europe
who accidentally started areligion.
Gosh to be a fly on the wallfor that.
What's so fascinating aboutthis copy being printed by
(34:30):
Francis Bailey is it actuallystarts with a disclaimer.
I have the disclaimer if youwant me to read it, I printed
out so much stuff.
Okay.
So you open the book and it'sactually in great condition
because it's published 1796, 54years later there's a note
someone wrote in the front coverthat says hey, I love this book
so much that I rebound it.
(34:51):
So it's in great conditionbecause someone rebound it in
the 1850s.
You open it up and there's thisapology on the title page,
called Preliminary Observations,by the Translator.
It says the translator wouldnot have taken the liberty thus
to introduce a new expressionand supplant an old one without
what appeared to him asufficient reason and such as
(35:13):
will justify him in the opinionof discerning readers.
His reason is this that theauthor himself constantly uses
the Latin term conjugial inpreference to conjugal, which,
when yet the latter term isequally classical and appears
alike expressive.
And that the author did thisintentionally and not of caprice
(35:34):
is evident from thisconsideration that in one
particular passage, it is hopedthis will be thought a
sufficient apology for thetranslator's following his
example on account of itssuperior softness and
expressiveness.
So it's fascinating to me thatwe opened the book and the first
thing is like because, likevery modern preemptive damage
(35:57):
control of like hey, before anyof you get in the comments, just
know I had a reason for sort ofmistranslating this or that,
because Latin is hard.
So deal with it.
It's kind of hilarious.
What's also very interestingabout this is I love Francis
Bailey.
(36:17):
I've got like a historicalcrush on him.
I think he's so cool, he'sreally popular.
His printing press is goinggreat.
We also know it starts to loseits popularity.
One of the reasons is becausehe switches from sort of
publishing all of these likeContinental Congress and
patriotic things about the newworld to doing pretty much only
Swedenborgian materials.
(36:38):
Swedenborgianism is a prettyfringe religion at this point.
So he falls into this nichecategory where he's not printing
anything like that people arereally reading anymore.
He's got a few smallercustomers and that's it.
What's really interesting aboutthis artifact is it has a swash
(36:59):
letter.
A swash letter is a letterstylized in print and what it
has is sort of it looks like theintegral system, which is this
like long, curly F shape, butwithout the crossbar.
This is called the medial S.
The S we use today is the roundS.
(37:21):
The round S is still used.
It's in the end of words, solike hers round S.
But they'll still use thismedial S at the beginning of
words and before hyphens, and sobefore the 18th century that's
super standard practice.
Reading any document it lookslike it says like both sephol
(37:44):
and it's like that's so special.
They just were using this likesilly emoji for some reason.
Well, it sort of dissolvesbecause of the development of
something called the Caslontypeface.
So 1722, there is the Caslontypeface.
And when I say Caslon typefacewe're sort of talking about like
ye olde Times New Roman orAriel, like this is the font you
(38:08):
want everything to be writtenin, because that's proper and
professional, and that includesour Declaration of Independence
is actually printed in Caslontypeface.
Ayla Sparks (38:16):
Oh, wow.
Mikaela Prescott (38:17):
And by 1796, all of Caslon's new typefaces
don't have this medial S anymore.
They've gotten rid of it.
It's no longer the standardpractice.
So when Caslon font becomes themost acceptable font, any
printer worth their salt isgoing to go out as quickly as
(38:37):
they can and buy the new stampsfrom the Caslon collection.
By the mid-1790s Caslon fontsare no longer using the medial S
.
Your documents shouldn't havethe medialS either, sort of
dissolving.
But 1796, this first edition ofConjugial Love is printed and it
(38:58):
does have the medial S.
What does this tell us aboutthe state of the super popular,
successful printing press?
They're printing all thispatriotic material.
He's in the same readingcircles as Benjamin Franklin and
then a couple years later we'resort of led to believe either
he's lost track of the hot newtypefaces or can he not afford
(39:22):
the new typefaces.
What does that tell us withouttelling us anything about the
state of Bailey's printing press?
One of the most important booksto him personally, he's
printing with outdated typefaces.
I think is really interesting.
But that's something that whenyou approached me about the
podcast, I was like oh, is thismy chance to talk about our copy
(39:44):
of Conchuchula?
Ayla Sparks (39:44):
Exactly.
This is my opportunity AmazingWell and the other opportunity
that you took.
I'm also very interested inSpoon or spoon.
Mikaela Prescott (39:54):
Tell me about the spoon.
This is another thing that ourwhole job as curators sort of
contextualize the items we'reputting out to make people care
about it, to make peopleinteract with it.
It's six and a half inches longand it's a pewter teaspoon.
The bowl of the spoon, whichyou'd actually eat off of, is
sort of like dippled andsculpted into this carving of an
(40:16):
apple tree Right off the bat.
That tells us a story.
This item was never meant to beused for eating.
So, moving forward, what doesthat leave us with?
And my mind immediately goes tonot so much our generation, not
so much my parents' generation,but a lot of people I know's
grandparents.
Ayla Sparks (40:33):
My grandma had three cases in our kitchen of
all different spoons.
Mikaela Prescott (40:39):
There was very much a time and era where
people were collecting uselessspoons and it was like a
cultural resurgence and likeeverybody's grandma was
collecting spoons.
So we're led to believe this islike a collector's spoon.
But what are they collecting itfor?
So I sort of get into the sortof theory behind the phrase.
(41:00):
They were born with a silverspoon in their mouth.
Where does that come from?
And the most notable spoon inEngland being the coronation
spoon, of course, 1603,coronation of King James I.
It's a literal spoon whichholds holy water and the
archbishop dips his finger intoit to anoint the king.
Wonderful.
Now, culturally speaking, we'relooking at 17th century England.
(41:23):
Silverware doesn't come inuntil the 1700s.
If you're going to dinner withsomeone, you're sort of expected
to bring your own, like messkit, pretty much so when we're
talking about spoons and they'resort of, therefore, a status
symbol attached to spoons.
If you're going to dinner witha noble family and you're
expected to bring your ownspoons, this is your chance to
(41:43):
show off that you've got goodspoons, bring out the fine china
.
Exactly.
You're bringing your fine chinamess kit to your buddy's house
and so you would bring spoonsthat were like pewter was your
upper middle class and silverindicated you were really
wealthy because you could affordto bring your mess kit made out
of silver to your buddy's house.
And then they become moreintricate and this sort of goes
(42:05):
along with the archbishop andthe coronation is.
They sort of start coming outwith apostille spoons, which are
spoons which on the handle oron the bowl shows a picture of
one of the apostles, and thenthat sort of evolves into saint
spoons.
And then the time frame getskind of hazy.
So some people are sort ofciting that these spoons become
popular gifts in the late 1400sand that tradition dies out
(42:28):
around the mid 1600s, but othersare claiming it sort of carries
on into the 20th century and,as your grandma can attest, some
people are still very much intothese collector's spoons.
Regardless, it becomes apractice that when a child is
baptized they should be gifted asilver or pewter spoon, usually
by like a godparent, in orderto set them on the right path in
(42:52):
life.
What's really interesting aboutthese spoons is we're talking
about apostille spoons, we'retalking about Saint spoons.
We have a Johnny Appleseedspoon and so I sort of compared
it to a 1490 spoon that the Methas in their collection and the
Met has basically gone back andforth like we think it's like
1490 and we're pretty surethat's supposed to be Saint Jude
(43:13):
on top, and our spoon is kindof almost identical to this
spoon but it's Johnny Appleseedon the top, which is just
fascinating to me because we'retalking about this character and
his folklore and who he is andwhat he's become.
We're sort of brushing intothis hazy area of like.
The same way we consider saintstoday is, yes, they were real
(43:39):
people, but how literally do wewant to take all of their
miracles?
And for some people that answeris like incredibly literally
and that's awesome.
And for some folks it's likewell, let's take some liberties
here and understand that whenwe're talking about this miracle
, what they probably meant washe didn't walk 200 miles.
(43:59):
They probably meant he walkedlike 20.
It's sort of that walking backand finding the truth in the
detail.
This is not the first timeJohnny Appleseed is elevated to
this idea of this like sainthood.
Someone does call him thepatron saint of American
orchards, Neil Gaiman is callinghim an American god, and you
(44:20):
yourself have cited an articlewhich is very popular, sort of
equates him to an AmericanDionysus.
This is not the first or lasttime that Johnny Appleseed would
be sort of like looked at withthat raised eyebrow, and so it's
such a little artifact.
But I believe that littleartifacts can also tell really
big stories without sayinganything.
(44:40):
I find this spoon fascinating.
Ayla Sparks (44:43):
Oh well, it's a very special spoon, so it worked
out great, thank you.
You guys must do some prettyfun events at the museum, I'm
guessing too.
Mikaela Prescott (44:53):
So it's a bit of a loaded question there.
So we have the museum and,historically speaking, our
museum is operating under theumbrella of Urbana University.
So all of these events and allthis stuff was sort of also
working with the college.
And then the COVID-19 pandemichits and Urbana University
(45:13):
permanently closes.
That leaves our museum, whichis staffed by the college and
run by, like college interns, onone of the college campus
buildings.
We're sort of in a lurch.
We buy a building, we goindependent, which was crazy,
but it's obviously worked outfor us, which is wonderful.
But so this is our first sortof we're staring down the barrel
(45:35):
at our first year operating byexciting.
It's been so rewarding.
But this September especially Ithink I said at the top this
would be his 250th birthday.
So, as you can imagine, mySeptember calendar is crazy and
we're just trying to.
Right now we're sort of workingon ingratiating ourselves with
(45:56):
different school age groups,bringing in a lot of kids and
that hands-on experience,because I don't want other
future kids to have the sameidea of John Chapman that I did,
which is like Johnny Appleseedthat's the guy who gets me out
of math class sort ofintroducing the importance of
John Chapman.
And this year especially, we'resort of trying to get involved
(46:18):
with all these different eventsand festivals and Johnny
Appleseed hot spots, so hisbirthday is on the 28th, which
is a Saturday.
Our town where we're located,urbana Ohio, does a cupola
parade and chili cook-off.
We are also throwing JohnnyAppleseed a birthday on that day
.
We're going to be in the paradeand a lot of people are, like
(46:38):
you know, have their chili andgoing out.
We're inviting them to come tothe museum, hang out.
We've got these beautiful yards, this beautiful side yard,
beautiful backyard.
We have a Johnny Appleseeddescendant orchard.
Come see our nasty littleapples, come sit in our grass,
Come watch the deer, you know,party it up with us and
celebrate this guy who's kind of, for all intents and purposes,
(47:02):
withstands the test of time.
We're hoping next year 2025, wecan set a more predictable
schedule of events like museumsall across the nation.
That's our annual this and ourannual that, but we're still
really new to this whole space.
Ayla Sparks (47:15):
Well, it sounds like you guys are well on your
way and I'm excited to see whereyou guys take it.
And thank you so much formeeting with me and being
willing to share the true JohnnyChapman apple seed.
Mikaela Prescott (47:28):
Oh, thank you so much for having me.
This was really, this wasreally a delight.
Ayla Sparks (47:32):
Thank you so much for tuning in and supporting
Curator's Choice, a Mighty OakMedia production.
If you enjoyed the show, pleaseconsider subscribing and rating
the show on Apple Podcasts,spotify, youtube or wherever you
get your podcasts.
If you love a museum and wouldlike to hear it featured in an
episode, shoot me a message atcuratorschoicepodcast at
(47:54):
gmailcom.
I'll do my best to reach outand see if I can get them to be
on the show.
You can also view articles,artifacts and more by following
us on Facebook and Instagram.
Thanks for listening toCurator's Choice, a podcast for
history nerds and museum lovers.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!