The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 886: Who Was the Real Johnny Appleseed?

Episode Date: June 8, 2026

Steven Rinella talks with author Isaac Fitzgerald. Topics discussed: Isaac's new book, American Rambler: Walking the Trail of Johnny Appleseed; the true story of Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman) versus the mythologized version; land speculation, westward expansion, and environmental impact; Appleseed's religious influence; the role of storytelling in shaping national legends; the role of apples and cider in American history; John's role in the War of 1812; and more. Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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who has a brand-new book I'll call, American Rambler, walking the trail of Johnny Appleseed. Johnny Appleseed being one of those dudes that I feel like I know about, but I don't know about. Now, you probably know the Disney-Fide version. You know the version that they teach you in elementary school,

but he is an American legend, but he was a real guy. His name was John Chapman. And that's one of the things I love about him. When I first brought it up to the woman that's now my wife, I was thinking about writing a book about him, I said, Johnny Appleseed, he was this great walker, he was kind of into faith, I'm kind of coming back into faith a little bit in my life.

And she was like, he's not a real dude. Yeah. And she's like, Paul Bunyan, Peko Spill. And I was like, those are real guys. Yeah, I was like, those are not real dudes. You're right. You're right. But Johnny Appleseed was a real guy named John Chapman,

born around the Revolutionary War. So I wanted to kind of walk where he walked and explore the country. I want to start out by telling you, you might not realize who you're in the presence of. This is Johnny Spencer, or you could call him Spencer Appleseed. Tell him. Tell him. He's an aspiring, you know, I want to start an orchard. I set aside my whole spring. I didn't do any hunting this year. Just so I could focus on planting, I planted 60 fruit trees, dwarf fruit trees and fruit shrubs in my yard. That's amazing. I want to just say, I love that we have like a fact checker here on the podcast.

That's helpful. Oh, you don't even know that. But too, were you planning seeds or were you grafting? I have not done any grafting. It's a mixture of things. So there's stuff that was done by like bare root, you know, which just like comes out of a cellar at the nursery and up to the biggest thing being like an eight foot tall pear tree. That's incredible.

So it's just a variety of stuff. I don't even know he was doing this. When I heard he was doing it, I was like, hey, we got to. a dude coming on and talk all about that. I said you should be in there. Very excited. Can I ask what gave you the love of like your hunter, but to take off a full season is a lot? Well, I like foraging, and now I don't have to leave to do it.

I can just do it in my backyard. I also like the idea of perennials rather than annuals. I feel like the gardeners in the office here, which there are many of, they talk about it with more frustration than love. You disagree? Oh, no. Okay. My garden from a place of angry. Yeah.

That's what I have witnessed. And so I'm like, I don't want to be the one who's mad that my tomatoes froze on June 4th. I would rather just like put a perennial on the ground. And then it's like going to keep doing its thing. And I don't have to be the one who gets mad every year when it doesn't. You'll find plenty of reasons. I will get mad. But you're trying to start from a place of joy.

You're trying to start from place. But what you said earlier too is like you like gathering, but now you want to do it from your backyard. That's why most people start a little more farming, a little more harvesting, a little more seasonal, which is what Chapman did himself. Spencer's too young to call him an old eccentric, but when he's older, he will absolutely be regarded as an old eccentric. He's going to have a little that chapman-esque. He's an aspiring old eccentric. You're on your way. I love that.

All right, man, tell people, before we get into the book and everything, tell everybody where you're from and you're your other book. So listen, I, I grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, but then I lived out in North Central Massachusetts. You know if you know, you go far enough west of Massachusetts, it gets real pretty. Yeah, before there. Before where people go on color tours. Exactly. Exactly. Kind of like the rust belt of Massachusetts. And that's what my first book's about. It's called Dirtbag, Massachusetts. And it's really, I really love to write about juxtapositions. I love about, like, kind of wrestling with the ways in which things are contradictory. And Massachusetts is a very rich state,

but it still has very, very low-income areas, one of which I grew up in. Yeah, you guys grew up poor. Or you grew up poor. I grew up. I grew up unhoused, which on paper, you would think those were,

like, kind of the worst years of my childhood, but I actually loved those years because I was surrounded by other adults. I was part of this community in inner city, Boston. It was Catholic worker. It was very much everyone kind of taking care of one another. It was really community-driven,

and I loved it. And then when I moved out to this farm in kind of north central Massachusetts, that's when things got lonely. But a few towns over is where John Chapman was born, like I said, during the Revolutionary War. I don't want to talk about him yet. Not yet.

So I was, but I became, I want to ask you think about growing up, though. Oh, yeah, no, ask me. Your dad, you're like, your dad would take you guys out on. Oh, yeah. In your book, American Rambler, you're roaming around. Yeah. But your dad was a roamer.

He was, and he would drag you on his roams. Absolutely. A wander and a rambler. Because again, we didn't have any money for any kind of vacation. And so my father would take me out on these long camping trips, these long hikes. We would sleep outside. We'd go up into the White Mountains in New Hampshire. I love the White Mountains.

And we were part of this thing. It was, you know, it wasn't anything official, but it's called the 4,000 footers club. And you were just trying to climb all the 4,000 foot mountains, which I know out here probably sounds a little small to y'all. But for us, those are the big mountains out of the East. Yeah, well, I mean, one of the deadliest mountains in the countries in the White Mountains, right? That's right. Is that George Washington, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so absolutely just growing up with him and what he would do, you know, when you're walking, and I think about this a lot in all sorts of different ways, but when you're walking with an adult and you're a child, it's actually pretty tough. They got these long strides, and you're just trying to keep up. And so my dad... Looking at the back of their shirt all day long.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And my dad would tell me these long, meandering stories to try and get me to keep up with him, trying to make sure he'd be like, oh, if we just hit this piece, peak or if we just hit this kind of turn in the trail, I'll tell you what happens next in the story. So he'd almost give me these like cliff, cliffhanger cereals to keep me going. Now, when I started

consuming culture as I got older, all of a sudden, it'd be like, Luke, I am your father. And I was like, this sounds familiar. Like he was just, he was just ripping off all these things and telling him, but I loved, I adored those times with my dad. I adore you. You're like, wait, they stole that from my dad. Oh, yeah, exactly. Just start reading Lord of the rings and be like, how did this guy talk to my dad? That's nuts. But genuinely, I just, I love them so much and I love those times spent with my father because it was, one, it was bonding. You know how it is when you get out there. It's just, it's beautiful. It's gorgeous. We'd sleep under the stars or in a tent. Every once in a while, the weather would be pretty rough. He had this beat up old Toyota, like blue

rusted out truck that had like that plastic covering on the bed. And so if things got real bad, we'd try to get back to that. And we'd sleep in there. And I just remember kind of like curled up in my dad's chest. Those, those walks were the most spectacular times, like some of my best memories with him as a father. And it does come down to this kind of storytelling that he used to do. And he would also be ripping off American legends as well. Yeah. Okay.

Intro, what's the first you ever heard of Johnny Appleseed? I thought about this when I was thinking about, I was like, I think the only thing I could think about Johnny Appleseed is he had a, he wore around a pot on his head. That's all right. Which, by the way, sadly, I hate it. to dispel that rumor, but probably he's not factually accurate. I'm so sorry, man. I apologize. He did probably wear a bucket.

He usually had a bucket, but the tin pot with a handle off of it really hadn't been thought up yet at that point. That's kind of almost a few decades later, but yes. They gave that idea to him decades later? Oh, yeah. No, his whole deal is he gets lionized a few decades after his death, and we'll get to that. But no, so the first time...

Are you... Are you aware that Boone didn't wear a coon skin cap? Don't break my heart. Crockett wore a coonskin cap, but he wore almost like a provocation, like it was a goof. As a troll, basically. He was like, oh, you think I'm such an outdoors?

People be like, oh, my God, here he comes in his coonskin hat. He was like being audacious. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, yeah. Again, these things get put back on these legends, right, as we learn about them. And as we try to basically flatten them and make them less complex so that they can be consumed by young children. But the first time I heard about Johnny Appleseed was very much my dad because he would tell these kind of giant elaborate stories.

And my Johnny Appleseed of my father, he walked all the way to California. He brought apples here over the Atlantic Ocean on his shoulders. My dad was such a storyteller. He went so big. And so my mother's job was kind of to bring me back to Earth. She'd be the one that would take the encyclopedia out and be like, hey, he was actually a real guy. His name was John Chapman. He was born right down the road in Lemonster, Massachusetts.

Maybe not the tin pot hat. Definitely not the getting to California. But he was a proselytizer. He was a wanderer. He planted orchards. He did not throw seeds willy-nilly. He actually was pretty committed to an almost haphazard style of land speculation. And so my mom kind of taught me all about that.

But it wasn't until later in my life when walking came into my life again in a really big way, the same way my father loved walking. And faith came back into my life. The same way my mom has always been interested in prayer, I was approaching 40 and I was realizing these things were returning into my life. After a lifetime of kind of trying to be different than my parents, I all of a sudden realized I was coming to their traditions again. And that's when I started thinking about who's one of the walkers in history that I would love to explain. floor. And that's like I said, I was like to my wife, I said, Johnny Apple. See, she said, not a real guy. And I said, no, well, actually, I got to push up my little nerd glasses and go, well, actually.

And that's how this book was born. Tell them what you were telling me the other day about that wasn't like eating apples. He didn't make tasty apples. Oh, no. Made spitters. Spitters. Yeah. Walt Whitman would describe it as tart enough to make a Blue Jay scream. spitters. That's tart. And it's coming from seeds, right? Yeah. That's what happens. If you graft an apple tree, if you graft an apple tree, let's say you have a honey crisp, you graft that apple tree, you're going to get that same apple. You're cloning at that point.

Exactly. But what happens if you hit it with seeds? Well, if you do a seed, it's sort of, you don't know what product you're going to get. And I feel like what Johnny Appleseed was doing was sort of a survival of the fittest almost. He was allowing the seeds to become their own apples that then, like, evolved and diversified what the apple crop was on the continent. That's exactly right. And it was this version of basically because of cross-pollination.

You had no idea, whatever seeds you put in the ground, you had no idea what kind of apple you'd get. But they were usually small and they were usually tart. And despite what Disney teaches you in melody time, which I won't sing the song because we don't have the rights to it. But if you were a kid that grew up, especially around church, you'll remember the Lord's been good to me. And so I think the Lord forgiving me the things I need,

the birds and the bees and the apple seeds, the Lord's been good to me. It is very much all about apple tarts for the settlers. It's all about apple pies. It's all about this wholesome American story of westward expansion, which then after his death, he kind of

becomes the Mickey Mouse of Westward expansion so we can kind of ignore the brutality and the bloodshed that went into that. But it's not true. Every single apple. The seeds that he got even came from, citeries, and the apples he was making were all for alcohol.

And that's really when I was like, oh, this is my guy. This is my guy. He was moving westward ahead of settlers. He was very smart thinking about the fur trade business is something you guys talk on here all the time. He was doing a kind of land speculation business, but also an orchard business where he was getting ahead of settlers. And as they were arriving, he would be like,

oh look, do you want to just pay me a little bit of money? All these apple trees are here or we could partner because he's going to keep moving on. He never had a home address. He's going to keep wandering. But he would partner with these people to kind of basically lay claim to the land. And at the same time,

they would be so excited because there was potable water was kind of hard to get their hands on. There was something that they consumed so much of, which was alcohol cider and apple jack. Huh. Yeah. Yeah.

At the time, like a hard cider was more reliable than water if you were drinking. it. Like, I'm not going to get sick from this hard cider, but water, there's a decent chance. So we'll give it to the kids, too. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I read this book long ago. It was called, I think the book was about an author named Andrew Barr. And it was just called Drink. And it was like a history of alcohol consumption in the country. And he pointed out a thing, and I hadn't encountered this elsewhere, but he pointed out a thing, I believe it was going back to the the Plymouth Rock, the Plymouth colonies,

they had an idea that, that the water wasn't good to drink. Like, water wasn't good to consume. And they would consume as a thirst quencher, mildly alcoholic beverages, as a sort of, that it was just more pure than water. And you're right about the mildly.

I will say that. Sorry to the IPA drinkers of the world. Nobody was doing like a heavy 9%. It was, it was often something that you could just like consume to kind of get you through the day keep yourself somewhat hydrated um but yeah it kind of meant that the alcohol the alcohol consumption of that time period was so much more um i don't have the stats on hand but they are in the book it was so much more high than it is now and um and it was just part of the culture so tell

explain that a little bit better when you say the land speculating aspect of it so land was land was uh land was money, land was power, land was everything back then, right? And so I can talk about it real quick in bringing it into his, into what John Chapman was trying to achieve. But it's interesting because he also had this religious aspect to him. And I would argue that in the 1800s, coming up with like a new version of Christianity was the same as starting a website today. Like genuinely, like you were like, this is my new startup. And at the time, the shakers were around, Shout out to the shakers. I don't know if you're familiar with them.

They basically dance as a form of praise. They were not really into sex, though. So their numbers have dwindled over the years to the point where there are now two practicing shakers. Wow. Because they weren't procreating. Because they were not procreating. That's a tough.

Catholics figured it out. A lot of other religions figured it out. Shakers didn't really, didn't go with the procreation. So they only have two practicing shakers. They are in their 70s, maybe 80s. They live in Maine. But I'm happy to report. That's in the book.

But since the book has been published, you could make the argument that shakers of fastest growing religion in America. Because they doubled? They have a 50% increase. A third member has recently joined. Isn't that fantastic? I was just going to say in the animal kingdom, that's called Functionally Extinct.

If there's like one of this kind of rhino left and it can't reproduce, that's labeled as functionally extinct. So I thought you were going to tell us that they were functionally extinct. They're fighting back. They're clawing on. Swedenborgianism. Swedenborgism. It's a tough one.

But it's the teachings of Emmanuel Swedenborg. And around the time that Chapman was like, in his teens, early 20s, it comes over from Europe. It comes from Sweden. Swedenborg himself was a philosopher who in his 50s kind of got into like, I can see ghosts. I'm talking to God. I'm figuring out this right way to live.

It's all in the book. book, we don't have to really get, like, into the weeds on that right now. But what you need to know is that Chapman was a strong believer in Swedenborgism. But is it a, is it of the Judeo-Christian Christian? 100%. 100% it's Christian. Got it. 100% it's Christian. And they have, they have actually somewhat progressive views for the time. They really didn't believe in slavery. Okay. They were early abolitionists. One might say they almost pedestal, uh, what you might say, like, Native, Americans and other kind of like around the world, people that were not living in the European style, and almost maybe to a way where that feels weird too. But they had really eccentric

viewpoints on a lot of different issues of the day. But one thing was, the harder your life was in this realm, the easier your life would be in the next, which is a very classic religious thing. Now, there are still practicing Swedenborgians here in the United States. I go... Really? Yes. Yes. Yeah, they have a giant, beautiful cathedral in Brinath and Pennsylvania outside of Philadelphia. I celebrated Easter with them in this book. It's a fascinating religion. It's a fascinating culture. In all these different ways, they've actually amassed a lot of wealth. But at the time, Chapman was accumulating land to get back to your question, which is a way of accumulating wealth. But he also didn't want to partake in it because he felt like it would actually mess with his. chances in the actor life. Got it. And so he would walk around again, no house, no address, partnering with these folks, with

these settlers to have the orchards running, but never sticking around to kind of reap their bounty. There's a joke that at one point he lost some paperwork and he lost like half of Ohio. But when he dies, at the ripe old age of his 70s, not to get ahead of ourselves, but when he dies, he has 1,200 acres to his name. and he had no progeny he had no family but he had it it got to spurs to like brothers siblings half siblings so the chapman family did keep it but he actually had amassed quite a bit of wealth despite the fact that he would often either sleep on strangers floors or proselytize in a town

and hope somebody befriended him and took him in or sleep in the woods so he lived this kind of popper's life so the tin pot on the hat not so much but he often dressed in like a coffee sack like kind of almost a scratchy issue. Yeah, so there is this like interesting, and there's all these different theories about him. Was he this way because he got kicked in the head by a horse? Was he this way because he got brokenhearted? There's all these different stories about him. But what really threads through it is here's a man that accumulated land, love to move west, love to do business. There's a real capitalist theme through Chapman, yet at the same time, he never enjoyed the benefits of it. Hmm. Can we back up? I feel like the Johnny Appleseed story kind of starts when he's an adult, but what do we know about his childhood?

Fantastic. Absolutely. Okay, so he's born in Lemonshire, Massachusetts. And shout out to Florence E. Wheeler, who is a woman in the 60s. You know those historical societies you find in every town. They're maybe not focused on the big hits, but they are focused in what happens in their community. So she is the one. There was so many rumors about Chapman, nobody knew where he was born. Some people said that his mother was not. Native American. Some people say that his father was a Harvard preacher. None of that was true. Florence E. Wheeler, one of these historical society women, really dug into the ledgers, basically, because that's how we find so much of history is who owed who money. Like that's, right? You guys talk about this on the pod. This is how people were keeping track of things. And so what we found was he's born of a Minuteman. Oh. So his dad was partook in the Revolutionary War, his father eventually became a guard of an armory in Springfield, Massachusetts. Not long after Chapman is born, his mother dies.

His father remarries and they relocate to Long Meadow Massachusetts. Now, did his mom die from complications of childbirth? Yeah, I believe it was a sibling. I believe that's correct. Again, as always with history, somebody else says it might have been a disease. I can't remember which one. But I do, I think the overwhelming idea is that it was complications of child. Because he has a lot of siblings, a lot of half-siblings.

His father, after the war, like so many people that worked in the Revolutionary War, and this is the story of my area, which is, again, this low-income part of Massachusetts. A lot of those soldiers were not paid the money that they were supposed to be paid. They were paid in scripts. Then people from Boston came and bought the scripts for pennies on the dollar. What's the script? Basically, if you were a Revolutionary War, if you were a soldier, the government that was very new wrote you in I-O-U.

Okay, yeah, go. And then you needed seeds. As you know, you needed seeds for your farm for the coming harvest. So you just needed anything that would get you seeds. So a bunch of people from Boston came out, bought all the scripts for very, very cheap. Oh, no kid. Gave them enough money to buy seeds so they could survive. And then passed a law in Boston.

You have to make good on the scripts. And so they became, it's just another way of the wealthy elite, basically amassed more wealth. And ripped off all of these guys that had fought in the Revolutionary War. And so Chapman's father is dealing with that kind of stuff. He falls into debt. He falls into drinking. So at a very young age, Chapman and his half-brother Nathaniel, I think kind of sensing that things are rough around the house set out and they go west. More and more people are moving onto the East Coast.

It's becoming what would feel like, especially to somebody like Chapman, I think, had a little bit of itchy feet and like to spend people alone. Again, remember I said I love juxtaposition. You said he had a little bit of a what? Itchy feet. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He was a wander. He was a rambler. But you know how I like juxtaposition?

Yeah. Like, again, he liked to be alone, but he clearly also enjoyed the company of others. But I do think he wanted to set out. And so he set off, we don't know much about him and how he gets to Western Pennsylvania. But he and his half-brother get to Western Pennsylvania, they get over the Alleghenies, get to Western Pennsylvania where Broken Straw Creek meets the Allegheny around the area of what is now worn Pennsylvania. There's a story, again, alleged. But that's a bloody grail.

at that time, right? Well, this is what there's, this is, this is, this is a story that is kind of impressive. He, don't get me wrong, he runs into a lot of trouble, the further west he gets, especially in Ohio. But there's a story, again, can't really fact check these, right? We're talking about stories that kind of get passed down. This is not a written down.

That's, that's one thing that's difficult about Chapman. Think about other stories from the time, right? We're talking about like early 1800s. Lewis and Clark kept journals, right? You have, there's many people from that time in history that, right? and they write so, so much. So we have so much to draw from. Chapman could read and Chapman could talk.

He was a proselytizer. He could really preach. There's all this documentation of people being interviewed after his passing talking about what a great preacher and speaker he was. But he did not write anything down. He did not write anything down. So we have no letters.

We have no journals. We all have sources from around him. But this one story is that, fell ill, Chapman went looking for help, and supposedly Native Americans in the area, probably the Seneca, taught his little brother how to hunt, how to fish, and how to sustain himself while his brother was off looking for help.

And there's a story of a theory that that begins part of Chapman's legend, which is that he was a friend to Native Americans, because he always kind of felt a deep to the way that they helped out his brother. Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart. IR. Radio.

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Let me know if you want to get a word in here sideways. No, we're coming up on a favorite part of mine. It was the only thing. I just want to set what, when he embarks out to the frontier of the time. Which again, we think of the Wild West as the West, but we are talking before the Ohio State border at this point. I mean, there are still, in the post-American Revolutionary War, and even post-war of 1812, there are often, there are open hostilities up and down the Ohio and full. fledged Indian wars happening up and down the Ohio. So when you go to those places

it is at that time to go into those areas, it was reasonable that you would wind up tomahawked in the head in your sleep. 100%. And it was violence. That's one of the parts of this book that I want to make so clear is not to jump quick

to the philosophies behind it. But I understand that this country, we have our issues and that we have our arguments and we have our political differences. But we must acknowledge how brutal things used to be. And that's something that I love. A lot of this book is about the history of Chapman. A lot of it is also me just looking at the country at an eye level and the hospitality

I meet along the way, the wonderful people that open up their homes to me along the way because I traveled where he traveled. And I kind of did what he did. I had a rule, which is I either sleep outside or I get invited to somebody's home. And how much of this country works? When you think about how much of this country functions, this is a vast land. This is a huge place. And when you look at it in the modern day versus, yeah, there was a time when this was a hugely

dangerous situation that he was putting himself and Nathaniel in. But to get back to it real quick, he gets out to Warren, Pennsylvania. It's him and his brother. And they meet one guy, Daniel McQuay. Daniel McQuay, I think, should almost have his own book written about him. I won't, you've written books before. You know what it is to hit a character and all of a sudden you're like, wait a second. Am I barking up the wrong job?

Maybe I should be writing about this. Oh, yeah. Daniel McQuay was hired by the Holland Land Company to do land speculation. And we've all been young men before, right? You know when you meet another guy and he kind of look up to him? I swear, I don't have any facts to back this up. But I just, just the philosophy of it, the theory behind it is that John Chapman met Daniel McQuay and really looked up to him.

He was described by a historian from the 1800s, a true son of Aaron. He drank, he fought, he was a bit of a maniac. He lived in a log, like, remind me that it's like the houses, it's like wider on the top and then it's this, I'm not going to remember. Anyways, he basically lives in a log cabin. What's the son of Aaron?

Son of, like, he's just from Scotland, Ireland. Okay. He's just like a big, massive, boozy adventurer. And Holland is paying him just to try and claim as much land as they can. He's also in wood trade. So he'll cut all these trees down, put them on rafts, takes them down the Allegheny, feeds into the Ohio, feeds into the Mississippi, all the way down to New Orleans. What? Sells it.

Rivers only run one way. Yeah. Walks a thousand, two hundred miles up. Does it all over again. Wow. You're kidding. paper. How kind of trees is he cut?

I mean, he's kind of all, he's kind of everything that's down there. And he's going out and genuinely, another Pete that I quote like 1800s historian basically says on the walkback, wild animals thicket, there's small, small settlements are starting to appear, like small European settlements are starting to appear along these rivers, but not many. And also there's Native Americans, of course, and highwaymen. Yeah. And he braved all of that.

And it's hard not to think. think that John Chapman wasn't a little bit influenced by this guy. Got it. In that same way, you know, when you're a young guy and you're looking and you're like, oh, maybe I could do some version of that, which gets back to that, this land speculation where I'm going to, if you put fruit trees in the ground under the expanding colonial and eventually U.S. American government meant that you were laying claim to that ground. Yet at the same time, he had no interest in actually settling.

And so that begins his story of he gets past Western Pennsylvania. His half-brother says, love you. I'm out. He and the rest of the family. At some point, he splits. The dad comes from Longmeadow. They settle somewhere around Dexter, Ohio. They settle, like, Southern Ohio, close to West Virginia.

But Chapman then starts this life of wandering, rambling, planting apple seeds, and running into very much what you just talked about, a huge, multiple, multiple conflicts, and he becomes the Paul Revere of the War of 1812. He did. I don't know that part of him. Nobody does. They kind of, later on, I feel like he was assigned to Chapman

that he was sort of a walking newspaper, right? Because he was going around to so many different places and he'd get information from Pennsylvania that he would deliver to West Virginia. Correct. He'd hear something in West Virginia that then travels to Ohio with him. Correct. Is that sort of what you're saying?

Yes. There's a little bit of debate whether he made it. to West Virginia or not. I kind of like to think that he did. No, there weren't borders of they. And they touch up. And I did drive through West Virginia at one point in the book, so it helps me that if I think that he did.

But genuinely, that's exactly right. He would carry the good news, which were the teachings of Swedenborgianism. Which, again, this very interesting view of looking at Christianity. But it's still, I mean, Swedenborgianism influences, I mean, we're talking numbers. You say that word real slow.

Sorry. Swedenborgianism. Okay. I've read it. New Jerusalem Church. Yes. New Jerusalem Church is what it's called now. Or Swedenborgian is a not like that's what you would call a practitioner.

But yes, they now refer to themselves as the New Jerusalem Church. They have 10,000 practitioners around the world. I believe it's 5,000 in and around Brinathen. They have their own town. They have their own fire department. They have their own police. It's a really interesting area. But if we're talking numbers, they're doing better than the shakers.

Sure. Yeah. But not as good as somebody that was influenced by watching that religion take off, which was John Smith and Mormonism. So Mormonism was heavily influenced by watching how Swedenborg's teachings took off. Got it. Did... Did... When Chapman took out, let's say you'd caught Chapman out and you would have said, real quick, what are you doing? What are you doing? Would he have said, I'm carrying my religion forth?

100%. Or would he have said, I'm carrying my apple seeds forth? I, listen, again, you don't know the answer ever. But I would argue he 100% believed that the teachings of Swedenborg were his Emmanuel Swedenborg. Those were. his passion. Those were his reason. But I mean, this is why I love this story. It's such an American story. You can have your passions, but you've got to be able to pay the bills. Granted, his were very, very low. But you have to have a little bit of a business. You have to have a little bit of an underpinning of capitalism to get you out there to make sure you've got it. You can grab some food when you need it or whatever's happening. And so for him, those were the orchards, those that the the the the the the teachings i believe were the ideals and then the land speculation the laying claim to this land was the aspect of it that he knew meant he had something to fall back on

even if again he never really even tapped into it i think he sensed some type of security from it if i mean real quick do you have a favorite like american legend yeah who's your favorite American luncheon. Boone. It's a Boone all the way. And on that point, you just said a thing that reminded me, you know the guy he said that you could picture Chapman talking to that Scottish wild man? Daniel McQuae.

Yeah. Okay. There's like a, there's a similar. Tell me. Tell me. Tell me. When Boone was in, when Boone was wrapped up in Lord Dunmore's war. Mm-hmm.

Okay. There's a similar story where he was a, he was a wagon driver, a mule, like a mule driver. He runs into a real wander who, and some people kind of have it pinned down to the campfire they were sitting around where he said, you know, this might interest you. There's this path I found through the mountains. Cumberland Gap. Young fellow like you might, right? And that's, and some people attribute that that was the beginning of, that was the beginning of Daniel Boone. And isn't that, the wanderer, right? A guy threw him a tip. Yeah. Through him a tip. And that's such a great way to put it.

Through him a tip that then he took such advantage of. And it actually led to a person who became larger than life. And that's what I love about Chapman, too. And it does, I mean, we have this today. We talk about a writer's writer, right? Everybody knows Stephen King. But who's the guy Stephen King admires? He's maybe not as well-known or comedian's comedian.

And we all know the big names. But who are those littler guys who, who maybe never got out of the honky talks, but they influenced our great outlaw country singers or our great comedians. And that's, I love finding those moments of history. Do you know who the guys... I do, and I've written it and said it a thousand times.

Randall's here he'd remember. What's the guy's name? I don't know. It's all right. It's all right. No, not John Finley. Was it John Finley? John Finley?

Well, listen, while I was working on this... I'm almost certain it was John Finley. All right. Shout out John Finley? we can come back yeah but there i found a bunch of these guys um and i i'm i'm going to blank on the name but uh we i think we should talk about him becoming the the paul revere of the war of 1812 well i got a i got a more detail oriented question it was john finley just all right hey john philley was like he he in his grave is like come on dude i told him about

Cumberland Gat. Like, why is he in all, like, why is he and all the paintings going through Cumberland Gat? It's like, I was there way before his ass. I told him about it. He goes through there and it's like, good Lord. But again, I'm sorry, there's something so American about that. It's what I love. It is oftentimes the loudest or the person who maybe, in Chapman's, I don't think he really

even sought out fame. Yeah. It really happened to him after. after his death. And that's a whole other part of this. He, I genuinely believe, was trying to be a humble person. But you have no control over what parts of history get kind of scooped up and then lionized and then put on a pedestal.

And then you have the person who's right. Your character, John, he's right. He's like, I should be more famous than Moon. But for some reason, whether they pushed it themselves or it's just the way history worked out, Boone's the one that gets put in the paintings. In that's why him? I can get into it because I got my at Johnny. I was in his story,

why him? It also comes down to it. Why him? Because of a guy he met. Yeah. A guy he met and it started the thing. I mean, the guy he met wrote like,

oh, I met this crazy, you know, guy and he like built him up and made him crazy and changed his, you know, took aspects of his biography and birthed a legend.

Exactly. He just happened to run into a guy that put him into a book and birth the legend. And it probably, and it winds up being similar, but similar to this story. It is so often.

When I'm sitting here, you had a pot on his head. Yeah, but it is so often a writer who comes across the story is maybe getting paid at the time by some magazine or,

and they're the ones that absolutely, I'm also drawn thinking of writers. Mark Twain, a great example of somebody, Chapman is this way too. Every state he enters and some that he didn't. They like to lay claim to him.

They like to build a statue to him. often carved out of wood lemon sir has a wooden statue they they usually carve it out of a tree mark twain the same way right here's this man who gets so many statues built about them they they all across the country all these different states lay claim to oh home of mark twain well he lived here once i mean george washington too right like we have this like george washington slept here or like hotels that have more of a sense of humor like george washington took a shit here like all these different ways of doing it, right? But what I love about that,

kind of that aspect of it, is that it makes the person, first and foremost, larger than life. But when you actually look at Mark Twain, what he used to do was just go to bars, listen to stories. Usually for the price of a couple of drinks, sometimes he would give him a little extra cash.

He would then just say to the person, can I use your story? and he would pay them just a little bit of money. And next thing you know, that's how so much of his work got built. And again, it just feels so American to me the way that these stories kind of start to outgrow. I mean, I want to say outgrow history, but the fact of the matter is is sometimes the stories become history, even though they aren't factually accurate, like the Tim Pot hat. I want to return to a more detailed kind of practical matter. Yeah.

Can you explain real quick? You've touched on it. But can you explain real quick the land, the land speculator orchard connection? Yes. You've asked me this twice now.

Apparently I have not done a good enough job. How does that work? Like, walk me through that. Okay. I mean, I am probably not fully educated in the history of how this country was taken over

to speak about it super accurately. No, just me from his perspective. But yes, from our perspective, I can easily say, you basically have European settlers coming over and wanting to lay claim to land. You have Native American countries. You have Native American peoples. You have Native American tribes that already exist here. So there is, as we know, right, and again, how historically accurate is this?

But there's a lot of trading. There's Manhattan sold for beads, which again, maybe not exactly accurate, but you get the idea. Yeah. Europeans start coming in and basically making trades. for different parts of the country as they continue to move westward. All the while, of course, signing treaties where they say, we swear we're not going west of the Yohanis. We swear, we're not going west of the Ohio.

We swear. And of course, those then become violent confrontations as makes sense, as has been true of all history. Like that's the other part that I think is so important. We can look at these moments in American history and be like, oh, this is brutal and, oh, this is difficult, which don't get me wrong, it is. But this is how land has been taken and fought over in the old world and everywhere else.

But part of what happened with land speculation is you had giant European corporations, like the Dutch Holland Land Company. They would pay somebody like Dan McQua to just go west, build a log cabin, lay claim, put down markers basically to the rights for that forest. so that he could log it. If there were native peoples there, see if you can figure out a way to say, hey, can we cut down some of these trees?

Is that cool? Sometimes that works out. Sometimes it turns into a confrontation. So that's like the massive scale. That's like, I'm sorry to use like modern terms, but that's like the Facebook. That's like the Google. That's like the big scale stuff

was you literally had European governments, East Indian training company, something like that's like the big. On the much smaller scale, You had this desire, right, for westward expansion and settlers. And so the idea was if you were to plant the land, and I can't remember the exact number, but there was like X number of trees. It was called the donation tract.

And I think it was like a hundred apple and 50 peach or something like that. It was those. It was those two specifically. And I think you had to have a structure on the property. And those were like your three requirements. And their thought, when they were making those. requirements. If you are dedicated enough to put a fruit tree in the ground, then you're married to that property kind of. You're going to see it through to where you can harvest that fruit.

If you're putting 150 fruit trees in the ground, that's going to make you want to stay there and just like keep improving that zone. Okay, first off, I'm so glad you're here. So that was perfect because that's correct. Second, that's what makes Chapman such an interesting person. So he wanted to do that. He wanted his name down as somebody who owned that land, but he did not want to stick around to see it through. So that was his type of land specular. Like Dan McQua, builds the hut, stays there, is getting paid by the Holland Company,

it's taking the wood down the rivers, coming back. That's his place. Chapman just starts bouncing around. Now he'll walk back seasonally. He comes back. that's something that's very beautiful in his movements that I found that I actually try and do a little bit of in the book too. There's almost this seasonal, circular nature to it that I absolutely love. But he basically will partner with somebody say, hey, will you stick around?

Will you look over this land? It's now our land, which again, he lost so much of it, especially when he passes away, like a bunch of, I'm sure not everyone went looking for his siblings to be like, by the way, I was in a 50-50 split. I think they were like, well, look at that. Now this is mine. But that was the way that you got to lay claim. And, I mean, to think about it in modern terms, imagine if we could just, I mean, this country is so vast. Don't get me wrong.

It is so big. It's so beautiful. But the idea that you could just go and plant a few trees and be like, this now is mine. Of course, especially to young people, that was such a drawer. And so it's such a draw. And so that kept people moving westward. And one of the goals of the donation. was to put a buffer zone between the east and the native tribes that were further west.

And so Johnny is sort of encountering some of these tribes along the way. Can you talk about his relationship with them? Yes, absolutely. So again, I mentioned, I mean, this is a part of the book that fascinates me. I grew up in this area where the Wappanog led by this guy who the Europeans called King Philip. His name was Metacom. And his father and basically a colonialist father were the ones that made peace around Thanksgiving. And then a generation later, you can just see the way the younger generation was like,

neither of us like how this is working out. In a very interesting fact, just real quick, this is not so much linked to Chapman, but one of the issues was gun control because settlers brought guns. And very quickly, through trade, Native Americans then had guns. And then all of a sudden, the colonists started making rules around guns. And the Native Americans are like, what are you talking about? The tendency to want to be the guy with the gun, and the other guys don't have the guns, is not gone away.

It never has. In American culture, never well. It's a joke, I'm sorry, but it is a joke I could not make in the book. And then the Second Amendment was ratified, and there's never been any gun issue since, which, of course, has not. not been the case. Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart.

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And a very interesting, again, oftentimes, especially in elementary school and earlier histories, this is seen as like civilization versus the wild, which of course it's not. It's so much more complex than that. The colonists do eventually kill Metacom. They then get his head,

and they put it on a pike outside of Plymouth for decades, which is amazing because that's such a, European like that's you know that's William Wallace type stuff right that there is this like history of that and there's a play somebody made kind of making fun of bureaucracy much more modern that was

Medicom's head is still rotting on a pike down the road like basically it's they basically made it to play about what the town hall meeting was to be like at what point should we like the 90 year old guys still really like it but at what point should we actually take this head down maybe but yeah so there was this brutality

Chapman himself runs into the Seneca. He runs into the Shawnee in Ohio, 100%. You have to remember a lot of the tribes that we think of as Westward and Plains Indians actually were pushed out that way. So they kind of started around here. The one that I, in my head, really link him to, though, is the,

you don't know for sure, but you really think the Seneca are probably the ones in the area of Warren, Pennsylvania that helped him with the with his brother but the war of 1812 is uh oh you might have to fact check me on this because the war of 18 again like like with all these right like like with the french indian war and the which was part of the seven year war you have natives on both sides oh yeah so like the mohawk and the mohegan actually side with the settlers in king phillips war it's the Narragansett and the Wampanog and many other smaller tribes that are kind of at that are

fighting and Mediom's father made peace with the earliest colonists because he was in a fight with the Narragansett. So there's all this this ever-shifting generational divides. Yeah, the war of 1812 is kind of like the American Revolution part two. Exactly. And the English still had certain holdings. They had certain tribal affiliations. And, And there was a lot of, there were some issues that had been sort of punted around borders and things at the end of the American Revolution. And the War of 1812 brought all those hostilities forward and led to a further diminishment of English influence. I want to. And defeated a lot of tribes, because there was a lot of tribes in the Ohio Valley that threw in with the English during the war of 1812.

And it led to their defeat. Well, and also because they were, they were basically saying, we will make sure the colonel. to stop expanding west. That was part of the way the British. I want to say the Delaware. The Delaware is what's popping into my mind. But again, probably a fact check. But basically, during that time, Chapman has made it far enough west to Mansfield.

And if you'll allow me just real quick, Ohio is a incredible thing to look at. It is the heart of the country. It's shaped that way. Nobody thinks of it as the West. But at one point, especially for land speculators, Ohio was like the land of milk and honey. that's where they really we had all these kind of deals that we'd made that were holding us back from it and basically settlers just said screw those deals and they started moving inland then the war of 1812 breaks out chapman is in and around mansfield ohio again he never has a home address but it's probably

as close to a home base as he has because he's walking in these seasonal circles he's coming back to mansfield a lot and there is rumor a shopkeeper gets murdered to this day, we're not actually sure what happened. But a shopkeeper is murdered very quickly. News travels. Native Americans killed the shopkeeper and they're coming and they're backed by the British. Which was, just to be clear, a very understandable fear at the time. That was not delusional to think that that might be happening.

Town gathers, a call goes out. There are soldiers in Mount Vernon, Ohio, which is about 35 miles west. Again, can't remember the tribe. I believe it might be Delaware. But Native Americans might be coming to attack. We need those reinforcements. Sun is setting, who will go? Who will go 35 miles, basically the length of a marathon,

then some, to go get some soldiers down to Mount Vernon, alert them to our plight and bring them back. The way this story is told is that a shiny-eyed, long-haired, uncatent, skinny, probably mid-to-late, 30s at this point in his life, has already gotten a reputation, as you said, as like almost a news carrier, as a man who was a little bit of an eccentric in the area, seasonally would come around preaching about Swedenborg, raises his hand and says, I'll go. No gun, depending on legend, no shoes, but no horse, no horse for real, that's, that's legit. And he on foot goes on a newly cut,

newly cut road down to Mount Vernon a lot of the facts that we have about Chapman come from children of the time because he gets lionized after his death like I mentioned so those children eventually grow into adults and then

they're the ones that are recorded which again of course there's legend recording oral history a version of firsthand experience from an eight year old so take it all with a grand assault of course he's like the way I remember it Right. But he apparently was running by basically saying the Native Americans are attacking

Mansfield. The Native Americans are attacking Mansfield. I run to Mount Vernon to get help. And again, this is one of those interesting things, which I love. This is what I love about this project that I got to do. I think this country is more interesting when you look at it in its three-dimensional complexities. I think my family, which is also a tie through this story, starting with my father and those lovely walks that I had back in the day, is more complex when you look at it through this three-dimensional complexity. My first book was very much like the worst moments of my family story. This is more about, what about the camping?

What about the canoeing trips? Yes, we grew up really broke. But what were those nice moments that happened as well? And then John Chapman's story is so much more interesting when you think about it with this complexity. So was he a friend of Native Americans? There's a lot of proof that he was. But again, when war showed up right in front of him, he chose a side.

And he went and he got those soldiers, brought the soldiers back, came back with them, mind you. So he went the 30 miles down and did the 30 miles back, which that's the last walk that I do in this book, is I also walked from Mansfield to Mount Vernon, Ohio, and then turned around the next day and did it back. Wasn't fun. Wasn't fun. But he did it. Turned out the attack doesn't come. but that gives him notoriety and fame in his lifetime.

That is what almost gets him. That's what levels him up. And he becomes known as the Paul Revere of the War of 1812, which again is a story they, Disney never tells us. They never tell you're near elementary school because it makes him more complex. And therefore, it's easier to just brush it to the side. What is the Disney version?

You've mentioned it a couple times, but I don't even, that's probably the one I have in my head, but what is the Disney story? version, there's this, it's 1947, maybe 48, 1947, late 40s. There is a melody time. They make all these different kind of musicals.

I mean, basically what Disney's looking for, if we can get into the capitalism aspect of that real quick, is what's a story we can tell without having to pay anybody money? American legends. Nobody's going to come knocking on our door looking for the life rights. Pocahontas. What?

Pocahontas. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Beauty and the Beat. All the movies. The joke from the producers where he says, next time, no writers. Yeah, right. No, that's exactly right.

That's exactly right. And so one of the, they came out with a bunch of these different melody times. One of them was the story of John Chapman. And it starts with him. He looks super skinny and he's meek. Because it's true. He is the gentlest of our American legends.

He is this country at its most peaceful ideals. It's one of the things that I really love about him. It's one of the things I really respect about him. They give him a Bible. Do they get into Swedenborgianism? No. Oh. He just got a straight up Bible. Yeah, yeah. He just gets the Bible. He gets the right down the middle of the lane.

And the whole, the whole video opens up. And they show this in elementary schools across the country. They showed this after churches. If this isn't ringing any bells for you, that means you might have had an interest in upbringing. No, and I also picture the character played by him. He's got like a like a canvas sack with his seeds. 100%. That's exactly. Like a shoulder bag full of his seeds. That's exactly right. He's got a man purse full of seeds. Yeah. I'm ringing. I'm ringing back. And it opens with like all these very hearty men walking west. And he's kind of like, oh, I can't go west. Like an angel comes to him and is like, yeah, you can. They need apples. And then he walks west and he

throws his apple seeds, willy-nilly. No orchards, no capitalism, just out of the goodness of his heart. And then they grow. And then people have apple pies and they have apple tarts. And even, I will say, it gives, it gives Swedenborg like a little bit of a nod because they do believe in angels and they do believe in ghosts. And so then he gets older and everyone loves him. The animals love him. The Native Americans love him. The settlers love him. He's got no shoes on. And we can get into those facts real quick. Like this is the same John Chapman that like befriended a wolf and had a pet wolf for many years. This is the same. same John Chapman who, like, once came across some bears living in a stump that he called

his home and he decided, oh, I should let the bears have the stump because he's a good man. No, because it's bears. Because it's bears. You don't go mess with bears, I think, is the easier part of that. He purchased a horse that was about to be slaughtered because he didn't want to see it killed. And suppose that one might be real. Okay. They do.

Tell me more. And then he wouldn't even ride it, right? Because that was wrong to him was to, like, put the horse, you know, make it do his labor. Yeah, he really, there was some part of Swedenborgianism that really made him respect to animals. So he didn't hunt, supposedly, which isn't, that's, we also have ledgers where he got jerky. Like, you know, like, but like maybe. But he wasn't armed. He might have been eccentric later, right?

He wasn't armed. The horse thing was, there is paperwork that he bought a horse. That's great. And then partnered with one of his orgred guys and was like, well, you just make sure this horse lives out the rest of its days. Uh-huh. So, like, he had, he was apparently really good with children. He would often, because he did have big, thick, callous feet from how much walking he did. So he would, like, walk on embers or stick his feet with needles to much of, like, the horrification of children.

To like, wow little kids. Yeah, to like wow little kids. Exactly. So if you wind up being an eccentric old man. Don't do the wow and little kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got to stay away from that one a little bit. We had one of those in our town.

Yeah, yeah. They get a bad reputation. I grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. We had NEM, right? That's a bad joke. That's a bad joke. We had a lot. But no,

like another one is he didn't use a campfire because he thought it would kill mosquitoes because they were drawn to the light. Another one was, he thought he stepped on a warm ones, and that's why he didn't wear shoes. So there's all these eccentric. And it's why he wouldn't graft trees

because you're like causing some pain by cutting into a tree, right? And so that's why he goes straight to see. Well, so this is a two, This is a two-parter. I think it's both. Some people argue it's one or the other. He either didn't graft trees because, like you just said,

he did not believe in hurting other living creatures. And a tree in his, like, this is like the prototype hippie in a way. He is the American legend for our first Jesus-driven hippie. Because by grafting, you're cutting into live trees. Exactly. You're cutting a hunk of the live tree. You're replanting it. That's how you can ensure that you are getting the clone.

as you so beautifully put it earlier. Other people say, he just loved God so much that to do that would be to mess with God's plan. Got it. Which is, I'm just going to put the seed in. If the best apple happens to grow from it,

it'll be great. Of course, that never happened. But I would argue it's probably both. My cynical wife has a third theory when I told her about Johnny Appleseed, the real version a few years ago. she's like, well, no, he was, he was clearly a businessman. And so he was saving money by just, like, using seed.

He wasn't, uh, he wasn't following his religion. Um, yeah. He wasn't, he didn't have other motives. Because he could interview him now. This is the cheapest way. You know, you know what I get these seats for? Yeah. Yeah.

Zero dollars. No, that's exactly. To be honest, your wife is probably, yeah, if not 100% right, a big part of the pie. But anyways, to get back to that, that is the Disney, the Disney version of him was the sweet person and the Disney film ends with, Angel Michael coming down from heaven, taking his old hobo-looking soul up in and putting him in like the wall. Like he's our first American saint. This has some very Mormon-like tones.

100%. I'm glad to hear you say that some of that was influenced. 100%. I think it's important here that I betray, that I admit to a level of ignorance about apples. Oh, let's stop. You're going to come in here. I thought that I thought for some reason

that when you do buy seed, like in America, when you do buy seed, it doesn't work out and that you, that they always graft onto American crab apple. No. That the root,

I bet someone's going to write in, maybe, that the root that all, if you go to any apple orchard. Yeah. In America. Yep. That it is,

that it is grafted onto the American crab apple, root stock. I, I, I, I, I, I, well, I think our apples have become so corrupted. At one point, I think they say there were 17,000 species of apple on the continent. Now we're down to only a few thousand. And, and there's like these dudes, uh, and women who their whole life goal after they retire, they like, you know, have a, have a job that allows them to retire at 52. They become lost apple hunters. And they're going out looking for these varieties. So I'm sure, I got a hot tip. I'm sure we have many species. that... I know the nastiest apple tree in the world by where I grew up.

Somebody would like to know about that, I'm sure. But the version you're saying that they're all grafted onto crab apples, some certainly are, but not all.

Okay. All right. And I thought somehow when you planted a seed just like... It's not like an idiot. Now, I thought it somehow just didn't work.

No, it works. You just get a bad apple. You just get a really bad apple unless you want to make alcohol, in which case, it's a great apple. Yeah. Because you just need to be able

to grind them up. What I will say, real quick. Shout out to Michael Paulin, who wrote a great book, Botany of Desire. One of those was, yeah. Which gets into some of the different aspects and very much was informative for this book as well. Because the other thing is,

everyone thinks American as apple pie. So we think of apples as American. Not native. They are patriotic. They're from, like, Kazakhstan. Yeah, it's my love. They were brought over here. And I have, like, I have a few different Apple theories,

which are just, like, more bar room talk than, like, science where you're talking. Which is, I think delicious apples have the best PR on the planet. They look good. Red Delicious, yeah, but they're not delicious. I agree.

They're terrible. They have a honey crisp is kicking all their ass, and doing great. I'll tell you a real, a real shit apple is the Macintosh. Oh, here we go.

I like Macintosh. It's a junk apple. What do you think of golden delicious? The Honey Crisp has taken over to Apple World. What do you think of Golden Delicious?

Yeah, that's the McIntosh, that's a mealy, thick-skinned, bullshit apple. Johnny Apple. I mean, apologies to any Macintosh producers.

No, no. I'm with you 100%. Johnny Apple seed get some credit for the Golden Delicious which is a modern apple that's, you know, survive to make it

to grocery store shelves. He didn't make that, but he made its, like, parents in the Apple lineage, which was like a West Virginia delicious or a West Virginia golden, something like that. So, like, of all this

Johnny Appleseed talk, you'd still see a little bit of them in the grocery store. Now listen, when you take that many at bats, eventually you got to have a couple. You got to have a couple of good ones coming up. Is what he's saying? Is that check out with your research? I will say, I think this man knows apples better than me.

When it comes to the botany aspect of this, this is where I get the loosedest in my research. The one thing you bring up Macintosh, one thing that's fun is that in the book, I go to Fort Wayne, Indiana, which is where his story ends. It's where he dies. but they now have this incredibly huge, beautiful, wonderful Johnny Appleseed Festival. It happens every year.

Oh, they do? If you have a chance you should get. It was so much bigger and more spectacular than I thought it could be. I had some of the best food I've ever had. Granted, some of it was like

chicken dumplings by Amish people and when you have that much workforce for free, of course, you're going to make some really, really good stuff. But one of the other aspects of it is that Fort Wayne has a farm league team that their players go to San Diego

which is interesting. It's very far away. But they are called the Fort Wayne Tincaps. Oh. And it is a gorgeous stadium. To this day. To this day.

But the reason Usain McIntosh brought it up for me was I was like, so how did you come up with the name? And they had all these different aspects and they had some voting and there are other parts that were linked to Fort Wayne.

And one of their aspects was, well, we know we want to do something with Apple. And immediately they were like, oh, there's a little company in Cupertino, California that might start writing as some cease and desist letters because it's Apple.

Like when you think about how American Apple is one of the biggest companies on the planet and that is their logo. It's just an apple with a little bite taken out of it. It's this universal symbol that has really taken over. Like every culture in a way has this draw to apples. But the tin caps, they eventually went with tin caps. And I'll never forget. I interviewed this guy, Michael Limer.

It's in the book. It's like the money ball aspect of the book. It's like when I get into sports a little bit. And I just took him for a big walk and we did a big interview. And he was just like, yeah, people got real mad at the tin cap because it's not historically accurate. And I was like, it's a cartoon. Like the Apple also has a face on it.

Is anyone mad? Like, if you're a farm league team, like, you're having some fun. And he was like, you're writing a book about Johnny Applesee. You'll see. And he was like, he was all these armchair historians, like, just really game. He was like, I thought we were making a team for like the local area and community. Just for the record, they sell the most merchandise of any Farm League team. They've won the division.

They're really good. It's right downtown. The tickets are inexpensive. If you ever in Fort Wayne, go to a Fort Wayne Tincaps game. It's so, so fun. That said, he genuinely was like, we became a national story. Like, people were calling into CNN being like, there weren't handles on Tincah at that, this is a historically inaccurate.

And like, this is all the, and they got dragged. Really? Yeah. People feel so sure. Like, this is part, I mean, it's Daniel Boone. Like, right? People find their little slice of American history, and they feel so impassioned about it. And I think that's a good thing in the end.

But, like, eventually you do run into like, hey, guys, it's okay. It's just a, it's just a baseball team. You can calm down. Here's what I want to do next. Yeah. How does he die? Great question. Like bad?

No. No. War of 1812 happens. He becomes the Paul Revere of the War of 1812. He becomes the Paul Revere of World of 1812. He becomes the Paul Revere of. at the time was the West. And again, it's so easy to forget

that Ohio used to be as far as we were when it came to that kind of American destiny, that like March West. Eventually, and I love this fact about him, when he enters Ohio, it is so unpopulated by white colonists, his life and the population of white settlers is like a never-ending graph.

Like the years that he was there is just, what's the word I'm looking for in math? Exponential. It's an exponential graph of how many settlers move into that land of milk and honey. So he's one of the earliest, not earliest people. You know, there were some land purveyors and stuff, surveyors and stuff. But he is definitely one of the earliest settlers to really make Ohio his home.

And by the time he's hitting his 40s and 50s, it's gotten in his mind. overpopulated by white people. And so he keeps pushing West. Now again, this gets back to almost your wife's view of him as a perfect capitalist, which again, some people view him as a religious person. Some people view him as almost our first American saint. Some people view him as the first pacifist hippie.

Some people view him as just like a really shrewd, albeit eccentric businessman. And so there's something he said for, well, these people all have orchards. And all I do is I know how to get free appleseed. So I have to keep moving west to keep up with my market. So he moves westward as things expand into Indiana. Now, my thing, which is not true, this is me just adding to the legends. This is the part of me that's my father. I like to think of he's trying to relive his glory days.

Got it. He's trying to recat. You know, he's got, the old magic. Yeah, man, they don't talk about me in Ohio the way that they used to. Do I need to get back? Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart. IR. Radio, Canada's number one streaming app for radio and podcasts,

including IHart Pride Canada, your favorite hits and must have party bangers, plus personalized and curated playlists like back in the day pride. Come together, celebrate love. Take pride with you anytime, anywhere. Just ask your smart speaker to play IHart Pride Canada. Stream us on your phone or listen now at IHartRadio. Let's be honest about the kind of work that earns a season. It's not glamorous.

Scouting, hanging cameras, cutting lanes, fixing fences, packing, practice, prep, the stuff that doesn't get noticed, but that makes the difference. That's what first light fieldware is designed for. Fieldware is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues long after the season ends. Every piece is built for real use. No shortcuts. hardwearing where it needs to be versatile where it matters,

built to handle varied tasks and the demands of doing things the right way. If you live in preparation, fieldware belongs in that routine. Check out FirstLight's new fieldware collection at firstlight.com. He makes his way to Indiana. Indiana starts as a fort settlement. This is where I'm sorry I forget his name, but there's this incredible character that I discover

and I write about briefly in the book, which is this guy who was basically, he had red hair and he was born of settlers, then Native Americans captured him and took him as a child. He was raised by Native Americans. He fought on the side of the Native Americans during, again, something we've touched on, but haven't given nearly enough.

Like, when you're taught in education in elementary school and public school, it's like Revolutionary War, Westford Expansion, Civil War, Complex. Anyways, moving on, World War I. Sorry about some of that. slavery stuff. Moving on,

but we win. World War II. Haza. And then it kind of, we gloss over so much of the brutality and fighting that happened to win basically the middle

of the country. We kind of jump straight to that kind of wild, Wild West. This character, his name, I'm sorry that I cannot remember it, but it translates to carrot top.

I'm not joking. Really? Yeah. That's what I came from. No, it's not where it comes from at all. But he had red hair. He fought on the side of the Native Americans.

He eventually then gets won over back by the U.S. government. He becomes a spy. He comes back and fights for the union, basically, the federal, then marries and moves back. He basically is a spy. Again, just like Daniel McQuay, somebody should write a book about this guy. I will look up his name. We can put it up later.

Anyways, John Chapman is moving into Indiana and to Fort Wayne during that. time. Yep. And he's redoing orchards, but he's in his 60s. He lives into his mid-70s, which is really good for that time period, especially sleeping outside that much, but it's this walking. But he dies on the floor. They're not strangers.

This is part of, you know, yes, he slept on a lot of strangers' floors, but because he walked in these seasonal circles, he eventually strangers became friends. There's a story of somebody building him a room. off their house just for him. Okay. Right? Just, they construct an extra room just for him. So he's not sleeping in the barn or outside.

But they do not build a door that goes from that room to inside their house. Huh. Because he is covered in, and this is a direct quote, we beasties. Because at this point in his life, he has been living outside so long he is accumulating bugs. Got it. Wow. He is somebody you do not.

He is all full. fleas. He smells pretty bad, and you probably don't want him in your house. So they basically build him a glorified human dog house that is attached to the house. But that's not what he dies in. But does not have a door? No. I'm sorry. Outside of Fort Wayne. Yeah, dog house, man. He dies on the floor of a family's home. They write a beautiful piece of writing. They say that he looked excited to pass to the other side, which he'd spent his whole, life proselytizing. He gave a great sermon before he died warm by their hearth. And they say that he walked 15 miles earlier that day.

Really? So he went out exactly how he wanted to go out. And they recognized him as a person of notoriety. 100%. At that point, again, that War of 1812 thing kind of pushed him over where like he became a known entity in the areas. But again, it's not until 20, years later. So he dies in his 70s, but it's the 1800s.

When we are really trying to figure out how to coalesce as a country, we are looking for stories that talk about our best ambitions. Again, as we kind of move west and as there is this brutality. And for Harper's Bazaar,

a man writes an article that's like 30 pages all about this incredibly sweet, incredibly Christian, incredibly loving, beloved guy who was just out there, planning apples out of the goodness of his heart so that people had things to survive off of

as they moved westward. And that, in like the 18th, especially we're talking about civil wars happening. So we are trying to say, no, no, no, no, no, we're not just this brutal, terrible country that's mad at each other fighting over these really terrible issues. No, there's a goodness to us too. And that article is the beginning. of the basis of what becomes John Chapman, the man,

transitioning to Johnny Appleseed. Who coined, what's the first, what's the first time you see Johnny Appleseed? In print, it is almost certainly that. Okay. But some people did call him that even at the time. That was like a nickname John Appleseed. Because, again, he would just go to cideries.

And the siders, they didn't give, like, they, it was, it was, it was, it was, so it came about naturally. It wasn't coined by a writer. No, no, no, no, no. Yeah, we can't give it to, like, one specific guy. Does that work with the fact check? Well, I was going to, yeah, they were calling that at the time, it seems. But like, I'm just clearing up a number I said earlier.

The donation tract, it was 50 apple trees and 20 peach trees. Those were the requirements. He said 150. Yes, so I was, had doubled them. But like, if the marketing had been different around him, he could have been Johnny Peach Pit or Johnny, Johnny Fennell Seed. Like, talk about some of the other stuff he was planting. Thank you so much for bringing. that up. Oh my gosh, I spaced on one of the things I most wanted to talk about. So it's alcohol. It's all

alcohol, right? We talked about that earlier. It's all for booze. So why does that get forgotten? Well, you could easily make the argument of, well, we're trying to teach you to elementary school. And unlike the time, we don't booze up children anymore the way that we used to. But it's not. It's prohibition. So apples were seen as grapes. They were an alcohol making fruit. Back then, it wasn't, oh, it's... That's interesting, man, that that would have been...

You'd have viewed it that way. Yeah, you would not. It was not... You'd be like, oh, you guys are making a little bevy. You were making some pies. Right, exactly. It was not... Apples were not for...

That was their main thing. If people were eating them on the sides, that was like the side thing. Then Prohibition happens. Grandma hatchet, she's making the great fight against booze across the country. you know, teetolers are coming out of the woodwork,

and part of their war is a war on booze, and part of their war is a war on bars, and part of their war is a war on apples. Good. And it becomes, like, we have records of federal agencies coming to be, like, your uncle has an apple tree in his backyard. He's probably using it to make some kind of homebrew. And so agents are literally cutting out.

Apple trees down. And so Prohibition happens. Then the 21st Amendment, God bless, happens. We're back, baby. Booz is a part of America. But we all, I think, to be honest, I always look at Prohibition as like just like a drying out period where everybody kind of got to get their legs back.

And then they could kind of move forward from there. All right. Maybe we shouldn't be doing it all the time. And genuinely, the Apple industry needs new PR. And that is when an Apple. apple a day keeps the doctor away. Oh, no kidding, really? I swear to God.

That is when we come to think of apples as a healthy treat. And what's nice is they actually are. They actually are healthy. But for a very long time, they, just the way that the grape is linked to wine, apple was linked to cider, and that was their main true calling. And now what's interesting is only with modern breweries. Like the other thing Prohibition killed was small batch alcohol making. Then these giant conglomeration moved in, took over the booze business.

And for many, many decades, you only, you know, you'd have your five beers that you could choose at any bar. Only recently have people become reinvigorated in remaking their own booze or remaking small batch booze to serve local communities, which I love. Like, America had its best is when it's the most diverse. And so cider making is also coming. back in a real way. And I love seeing that. So cider making is on the rise. Riverhead Cider House. I live on Long Island. And there's a citery right by where I live. And that's where I wrote a lot of this

book. And they have just had tremendous success bringing back kind of old school styles of making cider and selling it to the local community with no dreams of going national, no dreams of becoming the next. You know, just like this is something that serves these towns here. This is a place to gather like a church, like a baseball stadium. You know, that's what a bar is. It's a public house. It's a place. I think, you know, you guys care about conserving land.

And it's something that's so important to me too. Like in this book, I'm in so many state parks, national parks. But there's also this need to protect places where humans can just come together and gather. And places like the riverhead cider house do that, which I really. really loud. I was never able to replicate this, but I one time made the perfect batch of hard cider on accident. No.

We were out hunting in the winter. Oh my gosh. And we found all these frozen apples under an apple tree. It was on a farm owned by a man named Alan Zerlott. And he had his orchard apples. Then he had these just stray apple trees out and about that he didn't harvest. I always thought those were the better apples. He has all these frozen apples.

we put them in one of his wooden crates, a wooden apple crate. I took them home and put it in their frozen solid. I put them in the basement in a five-gallon bucket. Okay. Mm-hmm. And I don't know what they had already fermented or I don't remember, but like all of a sudden it was just that you could like dip into that and drink it.

And it was booze, dude. It was good. And we later tried, you know, whatever. I did. It never like, it just never happened again. Do you know what I mean? It never happened again, but it just made this perfect.

It's just somehow these apples thawed and in my mom and dad's basement, like, made a hard cider. So what you just experienced. And never again, like, I could go get apples again that are frozen to throw them in my mom and dad's basement. It would just make rotten apples. But we have evidence of animals doing this. What you are talking about, there are some monkeys that do it in certain places. we have evidence of deer sometimes knowing during wet seasons to return to air. Like, I think a lot of animals enjoy getting a little tipsy.

And you, as like a human being, a full grown, you got to. I was a high schooler, but yeah. Yeah, all right, all right. Sorry, maybe not fully grown. That's like 26 is when the brain is fully developed. But you got to experience basically grabbing this thing, having it go bad, but going so bad that it went good. My own man, I don't know if this is the right word.

My own man called it Apple Jack. Yeah, that's exactly. So Apple cider is the like sipping all day stuff, but then you can make this harder apple brandy, which is very popular at the time. And that's what you call it Apple Jack. That's right. Here's my last question. And I think that this is true of you because some things you've said.

Okay. This is the thing I harp on all the time about American culture. the narrative if you imagine your online life your online life the online narrative is about that America is divided that partisan fractures

right we're leading to some great civil war okay yeah and I know and I understand like my online life is like I got it it's as true is true the country is splitting apart at the seams but my liver life, my lived life, I don't get it.

100%. I don't see it. 100%. The people, my neighbors, I've said it's before, my most immediate neighbors, I do not know what their political leanings are. I honestly don't know what their political leanings are. I know that if my home was on fire, they would rush in to check if my family is okay. and I know I would rush into their home.

Amen. I do not know their political innings. Amen. I don't even care. I don't need to know their political inings. I'll do you one better. I know my neighbor's political leanings. They are not my.

And I know that my blizzard, I'm sorry, I know that a blizzard came while I was out of town and they were the first people over there using their plow to plow out the driveway with a snowblower, making sure that my wife was safe. You know.

And I know that it. if their house was ever in any kind of situation, any time I'm able to help with them, those are your neighbors. Yeah. That is the point of community. That is the point of trust. You've said a couple things about your wanderings,

your American ramblings. Yeah. That, um, just, I don't know, you, you seem to express a sort of optimism about America. 100%.

I have walked outside and I've seen this country at an eye level. People are good. For the most part, don't get me wrong. you're going to meet jerks everywhere. The hospitality, the kindness, one of my favorite things, the curiosity about one another

is really strong. I love going to new places. I love meeting new people. And in no way do we start the way that they would start you on whatever Fox News or CNN or MSNBC. So what do you think? You don't sit down and you aren't asked.

What do you think about Proposition 1A? Like, no, man. Maybe baseball. Maybe basketball. Maybe basketball. Like maybe sports. Maybe we can have some. No, you walk into a place and you have a meeting with another fellow human being. And if I can say, honestly, we've talked so much about the history because I know that's what's of interest.

Talked about Westward Expansion because I know that's what's of interest. But the core of this book is it is a non-political look at where they're. this country is right now. And what I saw, you know, Ron Chernow is going to be able to write the great biography of John Chapman. That's like 7,000 pages long. Or Howard Means is this great writer. He came out with a book about John Chapman in 2011 from Simon Schuster. It's a great, straightforward biography. What I did was slept in a parking lot that's probably near where John Chapman used to sleep in the woods. That's what I did. And I got to meet so many individuals in this country, this country is not on the verge of civil war. This country is not this divided

partisan place that you see when you look at your screen. Don't get wrong. Phone's nice for a map. I can't be totally anti-screen. The phone is nice for taking photos or recording a voice memo. But the more time I spend off of social media, the more time I spend listening to podcasts of people that I enjoy instead of just staring at this large, media that I believe is genuinely invested in making sure that we feel scared, isolated, alone, and angry at each other, the better I feel. And the tough thing for me is there is, there is family history in this book as well. There is things that my family have grappled with in the last couple years. And I have seen firsthand what happens when you give in to

isolation, when you give in to loneliness. You cannot be scared. You, of your fellow neighbors. I understand that we are human beings and we have the potential to do harm. History is long and bloody. But at the same time, there are so many stories of coming together, figuring out problems,

working with one another, to make a safe haven for all of us. And I think this country, we are approaching 250 years. This country is an experiment. Is it perfect? No. have we done some entrocious things? Absolutely.

But when you look at our ideals, when you look at the better of our angels, when you look at the things that we are reaching for, when you look at the way this country comes together and still works, 250 years later, covering vast, Montana could be its own country. Texas could be its own country. New England put all those nerds in their own country. Like that, it could be that way. But we are one country. And it's a country. And it's, it works and I think that is a beautiful thing. And when I walked out in the world, I want to be very clear. My father said to me, you're going to get shot. I did not walk. Everybody's dad says that. You're going to get shot. And not to mention, we didn't even get into the lack of preparedness. I'm almost horrified to be on this podcast. I want to be clear. I've learned more.

I know how tens work. I've gotten a little bit better at it. I want to learn more if I'm being honest. Like hunting is something that I'm trying to get more interested in. I think that that's a really incredible part of the human experience. But real quick, my dad was like, you're going to get shot. I walked out into the country with no preconceived notions. That was an important part of this project. And what I found was so much more life-affirming, heart-filling, soul-buying than I expected. And I'm so happy I did it. And I hope that people feel that when they read this book, because this is a book of coming together. It's a book about walking away from loneliness

and towards community. Got any more you want to ask? Did you go to Nova, Ohio? Yeah, man. Okay. Did I see the last? Oh, here we go. We're going to get the real fact check?

Tell Steve. Okay. So Patty Smith, the Allegro Farm. This is what we're talking about. Patty Smith, the musician? No, no, no. Oh, my gosh. That'd be cool.

Wait, hang on. It's not Patty Smith. Sorry. Let me try that again. A woman named Patty on the Allegra Farm in Nova Ohio, there's a claim that is the last apple tree planted by John Chapman, and it still bears fruit. And I go and I talk to Patty. There is some interesting science.

It is exceptionally rich soil. People have taken seeds from this tree, and they have brought them to space. That is true. In the 90s, this tree was so popular that people used to show up in buses, field of dreams. style just to take photos with it. In the 1990s. In the 1990s. Then kind of the farm kind of went through some different iterations. Patty, I think, is kind of bringing it back. I showed up, I'm not joking.

You want to talk about a wonderful moment in America. I didn't call ahead. I didn't write an email. I just rolled up, knocked on the door, immediately was apology. I was like, I'm so sorry. I can come back later. Let me leave my number. This is weird.

And she was like, stop being weird, man. And just was like, come on it. You want iced tea, lemonade. water and she just sat and she just talked with me and so the story she had about not just the tree she also had stories about that that town was a stop on the underground railroad on the underground railroad she had stories about her great great grandparents and basically trying to help slaves get up into canada she had stories about the ways she used to take the apples and go she always wanted horses but they only had sheep and cows on the farm so she'd go to the cows and pretend they were horses

when she was a child. All these wonderful, like, again, this book is also very much about what's legend, what's fact. And at the end of the day, how much does it really matter? But it is also a rainbow tree, which some people take a little umbrage with.

Could that possibly be a tree that John Chapman planted? He himself did come to that area. That's documented because there was a Swedenborgian minister who lived in that area. So he would come through in commune. So he definitely visited that farm.

Do you think he planted that? that tree? Me? Yeah. I have to believe. Yeah, that's fun. I have to believe. I will say in the book,

I hedge it more. In the book, I hedge it more. But you to me, the person that I am, half my father, half my mother, I go with my father on that one. I love the idea.

So there's three trees there now, but one of them very, very old. And basically the idea is that the roots almost died and then re-grew. Got it. I get into the science of it in the book.

You can make up your own mind. Yeah, it's like not uncommon if you had a plum tree and it failed in year five. If you leave it for a season or two, something else may start growing there. And it could even be a fruit that's not a plum anymore. So that could happen, what you're saying. It could. And there's now multiple online sellers who will sell you a tree that they say came from the Johnny Appleseed tree. There's a couple different places.

And I see my orchard going through phases. Like I have a 2027 plan, a 2028 plan. Next year, I want to put a Johnny Appleseed tree in the ground. But I want someone to tell me that's a good idea and be like, yes, that's a Johnny apple seed tree. Let me do it for you right now. Because I will say this, I do, I talk to Patty about the person that's licensed the right to sell the seeds.

And that, to me, almost felt a little bit like I was like, this is going to be like a succession style story. And I decided, I was like, I was like, I already got a lot going on this book, so I decided not to chase that one down. Remember I mentioned the football? Sorry, remember I mentioned the baseball team? Yeah. So they have a tree in front of the stadium, which they won't cut because it's a Johnny

Appleseed Tree. So it's actually kind of blocking the sign. It grew bigger than they expected. And I'm pretty sure it's from that patty tree and this guy who's kind of licensed it and done it. But I will do you one better is what I'm trying to say. Please. I have these apples.

Yes. I will come back to Monta. I'm not joking. This is the kind of dumb stuff I do. I will come back to Montana. I will give you the seeds. Please. And you don't have to figure out whether it's real or not, you can plant the legendary Johnny

apple seed tree on your property. I would love it. Let's do it. That's the old eccentric right there. That's a future old eccentric. Don't stick needles in your feet when you're in your age. The property value is going to go way up once I've got a Johnny apple seed tree there. That's great, man.

All right. the name of the book, American Rambler, Walking the Trail of Johnny Appleseed by Isaac Fitzgerald. It's brand spanking new. It's brand spanking new. It's out May 12th.

New York Times bestseller. A lot of nice people have said a lot of nice things about it. Man, you got a boatload of. I don't think you can get into that. You got a boatload of great writers saying great things about the book. Check it out. I hope it's because they like it.

Thank you very much, man. Thanks for having me on, gentlemen. I really appreciate you. If you do off-season work, you know it beats up gear. Scouting, land work, crawling through briar patches, brush, weather, long days. First Light fieldware is built for all that. No shortcuts. Purpose-built, durable.

Hard-wearing where it needs to be versatile where it matters. It supports the work that earns the season. Check out FirstLight's new fieldware collection at firstlight.com. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human