"Due John Cheever one hundred and fifty trees 

 when he goes for them to some of my nurseries 

 on Mohecan waters." 



"John Chapman/' 



It is doubtful that any of "Johnny's" trees have survived to 

 the present day, but to quote from General Roeliff Brinkerhoff's 

 Mansfield, O., "Within the sound of my voice, where I now stand 

 there are a dozen or more trees that we believe are the lineal 

 descendants of Johnny Appleseed's nurseries. In fact, this monu- 

 ment is almost within the shadow of three or four of them." Rich- 

 land County owned all of its early orchards to the nurseries of the 

 "Apostle of Apples" as he has been called. In the woods, he sowed 

 various medical plants. 



Johnny was a welcome guest in many homes, but much of his 

 time was, necessarily spent in journeys through the forest, from the 

 site of one orchard to another. His dress was peculiar. He went 

 barefoot, and often wore a coffee sack, with hole cut for his head and 

 arms, instead of a coat. He took with him a bundle of cooking 

 utensils, often wearing his mush-pan for a hat. Occasionally, how- 

 ever, he wore one made of cardboard, with a broad brim. But no 

 weapon of any description was among his effects. Neither savage nor 

 animal would harm the gentle horticulturist, the former looking upon 

 him as a great "Medicine Man." 



He loved and reverenced life in its lowest forms as well as in 

 its higher manifestations, and it has been said that he "deserved to 

 be the patron saint of the Humane Society, of which he was cer- 

 tainly the earliest forerunner." He purchased any animal that he 

 saw ill-treated, any worn out horses, turned away to starve, and 

 found for them homes where they were kindly cared for. "It is 

 further recorded," says Mr. E. O. Randall, "that he would never sell 

 these poor and despised animals, but if any of them recovered their 

 strength so as to be valuable, he would lend them or give them away, 

 exacting a promise from the recipient that the dumb beast should ever 

 receive kind treatment." 



The friend of every living creature, he was willing to journey 

 thirty miles through the forest to obtain help for his fellow men when 

 Mansfield, O., was threatened with an Indian raid, or to relinquish a 

 night's shelter in a hollow log rather than disturb the frightened 

 squirrel who had housed her family inside. 



In his later years, Chapman found a new field for his planting 

 in Indiana, where he died, in 1847, at the age of seventy-two. It has 

 been said "that although years have come and gone since his death, the 

 memory of his good deeds lives anew every springtime in the beauty 

 and fragrance of the blossoms of the apple trees he loved so well. 



Roger Williams' Apple Tree 

 There are tall and stately trees in Rhode Island, still casting 



102 



