|
| |
Our Mission
John Chapman, or Johnny
Appleseed, was one of America's first conservationists. He believed that
planting and protecting apple trees everywhere he went would help prevent people
from going hungry.
Our mission is to bring the
issues of conservation and global warming into the classrooms of the world, one
or two trees at a time. In the spirit of John Chapman, we've based our
plans on planting apple trees. However, we realize that apple trees don't
do well in some areas, so we hope that those interested will plant a tree or two
appropriate to their climate.
As things progress, we plan to
add new programs such as poverty relief, clean water, carbon dioxide reduction,
recycling projects and alternative energy.
What if every school in
the United States, or the world, planted at least two apple trees?
Join the Global Johnny Appleseed Project today!
Click here to view our Global Johnny
Appleseed Project PowerPoint presentation.
For more teacher resources and
professional development opportunities see:
Http://www.21stCentury Schools.com
From Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_appleseed
Who was Johnny Appleseed?
John Chapman, or
Johnny Appleseed, was born September 26, 1774, and was the second child of
Nathaniel Chapman and his wife, the former Elizabeth Symonds (m. February 8,
1770) of Leominster, Massachusetts. Nathaniel was a farmer of little
means, although tradition holds that he lost two good farms during the American
Revolution. His father started John Chapman upon a career as an orchardist by
apprenticing him to a Mr. Crawford, who had apple orchards.
A third child,
Nathaniel Jr., was born on June 26, 1776, while Nathaniel was an officer leading
a company of carpenters attached to General George Washington in New York City.
Elizabeth, however, was suffering from tuberculosis, and both mother and child
died in July, leaving John and his older sister, also named Elizabeth, to be
raised by relatives. After being honorably discharged in 1780, Nathaniel
remarried Lucy Cooley, who had 10 children by a previous marriage. Around 1803
John's sister Elizabeth married Nathaniel Rudd.
In 1792,
18-year-old Chapman went west, taking 11-year-old half-brother Nathaniel with
him. Their destination was the headwaters of the Susquehanna. There are stories
of him practicing his nurseryman craft in the Wilkes-Barre area and of picking
seeds from the Pomade at Potomac cider mills in the late 1790s.
Land records show
that John Chapman was in today's Licking County, Ohio, in 1800. United States
Congress had passed resolutions in 1798 to give land there, ranging from
160 acres to 2,240 acres (65-900 ha), to Revolutionary War veterans, but it took
until 1802 before the soldiers actually received letters of patent to their
grants. By the time they arrived, his nurseries, located on the Isaac Sadden
farm, had trees big enough to transplant.
Nathaniel Chapman
arrived, family in tow, in 1805, although John's sister Elizabeth had married
and remained in the east. At that point, the younger Nathaniel Chapman rejoined
the elder, and Johnny Appleseed spent the rest of his life alone.
By 1806, when he
arrived in Jefferson County, Ohio, canoeing down the Ohio River with a load of
seeds, he was known as Johnny Appleseed. He had used a pack horse to bring seeds
to Licking Creek in 1800, so it seems likely that the nickname appeared at the
same time as his religious conversion. Johnny Appleseed's beliefs made him care
deeply about animals.
His concern
extended even to insects. Henry Howe, who visited all 88 counties in Ohio in the
early 1800s, collected these stories in the 1830s, when Johnny Appleseed was
still alive:
One cool autumnal night, while lying by his
camp-fire in the woods, he observed that the mosquitoes flew in the blaze and
were burnt. Johnny, who wore on his head a tin utensil which answered both as a
cap and a mush pot, filled it with water and quenched the fire, and afterwards
remarked, “God forbid that I should build a fire for my comfort, that should be
the means of destroying any of His creatures.”
Another time he made his camp-fire
at the end of a hollow log in which he intended to pass the night, but finding
it occupied by a bear and cubs, he removed his fire to the other end, and slept
on the snow in the open air, rather than disturb the bear.
When Johnny
Appleseed was asked why he did not marry, his answer was always that two female
spirits would be his wives in the after-life if he stayed single on earth.
However, Henry Howe reported that Appleseed had been a frequent visitor to
Perrysville, Ohio, where Appleseed is remembered as being a constant snuff
customer, with beautiful teeth. He was to propose to Miss Nancy Anthill
there—only to find that he was a day late; she had accepted a prior proposal:
On one occasion Miss Price’s mother asked
Johnny if he would not be a happier man, if he were settled in a home of his
own, and had a family to love him. He opened his eyes very wide–they were
remarkably keen, penetrating grey eyes, almost black–and replied that all women
were not what they professed to be; that some of them were deceivers; and a man
might not marry the amiable woman that he thought he was getting, after all.
Now we had always heard that Johnny had loved once upon a
time, and that his lady love had proven false to him. Then he said one time he
saw a poor, friendless little girl, who had no one to care for her, and sent her
to school, and meant to bring her up to suit himself, and when she was old
enough he intended to marry her. He clothed her and watched over her; but when
she was fifteen years old, he called to see her once unexpectedly, and found her
sitting beside a young man, with her hand in his, listening to his silly
twaddle.
I peeped over at Johnny while he was telling
this, and, young as I was, I saw his eyes grow dark as violets, and the pupils
enlarge, and his voice rise up in denunciation, while his nostrils dilated and
his thin lips worked with emotion. How angry he grew! He thought the girl was
basely ungrateful. After that time she was no protégé of his.
Contact Information
Please feel free to contacts us with your questions and advice by one of the
means below:
- Telephone
- 850-457-2946
- FAX
- 850-457-2930
- Postal address
- 8076 Castle Pointe Way, Pensacola, FL 32506
- Electronic mail
- General Information:
Info@GlobalJohnnyAppleseedProject.org
Jerry Self:
Director@GlobalJohnnyAppleseedProject.org
|
