After the war ended, Johnny began buying more land. Some of his orchards were less than an acre in size. Others covered hundreds of acres. He took care of his orchards all by himself for most of his life.
Sometimes he needed help for certain jobs. When he was forty-five, he hired two boys for a few days. They helped him build a one-room cabin on some of his wilderness land. Each night, they shared his simple dinner, then slept on the ground beside Johnny’s campfire. Wolves howled and owls screeched all around them. At first, the boys were scared, but Johnny told them not to worry. He was used to such things and knew the animals wouldn’t hurt them.
Johnny’s brother-in-law often helped in his orchards. However, none of Johnny’s family knew how much land he owned or how much money he had. He sometimes buried his money among the roots of a favorite tree. He didn’t trust banks.
America’s banks got in trouble in the 1820s. Many businesses failed. Times were hard for Johnny, too. Squatters took over some of his land. And he also had trouble repaying some loans. He soon lost all of his orchards in Pennsylvania and many of those in Ohio. But he didn’t give up.
Around 1830, he planted his first orchard in Indiana. By now most people knew him as Johnny Appleseed rather than John Chapman. In the following years, he bought 140 acres for only $250. He worked in his Indiana orchards for the rest of his life.
Johnny never got married or had children. Growing up in a noisy house as a boy may be one reason he preferred to live alone!
Still, there were many rumors about his love life. One says that he fell in love with a woman named Dorothy Durand. The story goes that she loved him, too. But their families kept them apart because they believed in different religions. Dorothy died of a broken heart. Johnny never got over her. He often returned to place apple blossoms on her grave.
In the last years of his life, Johnny owned thousands of apple trees and lots of land, perhaps as many as twelve hundred acres. This didn’t mean he was rich, but it’s likely he was too busy to go farther west. Besides, settlement on the West Coast hadn’t gathered much steam yet. But who knows—if he had lived long enough he might have beaten settlers to the Pacific coast and planted apple trees there, too.
Johnny Appleseed did what he loved all his life. He grew apples, took long hikes, and never settled down in a home or owned many things.
As the years passed, he continued to roam, sometimes renting places to sleep in farmhouses. He was always traveling and probably spent ten thousand or more nights sleeping under the stars.
After walking through a snowstorm to care for some apple trees, Johnny got sick with pneumonia. He died in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on March 18, 1845, when he was seventy years old.
By the time Johnny died, there were twenty-seven states. He had planted orchards in three of them—Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. They are shaded in gray on the map.
The United States was a very different country from the one Johnny knew as a boy. In 1845 Texas became a state. The big migration along the Oregon Trail began right around the time that Johnny Appleseed died. The Gold Rush in California began in 1849. At that time, California still belonged to Mexico. But it became a state in 1850. Now the country went all the way from “sea to shining sea.”
DISCOVERING NEW APPLES
ABOUT SEVENTY-FIVE HUNDRED KINDS OF APPLES ARE GROWN WORLDWIDE. APPLES CAN BE RED, YELLOW, GREEN, OR SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN. SOME TASTE SWEET. SOME ARE SOUR OR TART. THE LIST OF MOST POPULAR APPLES INCLUDES McINTOSH, ROME, GRANNY SMITH, RED DELICIOUS, GOLDEN DELICIOUS, AND JONATHAN. THIS IS HOW SOME OF THEM WERE NAMED:
IN 1811, JOHN McINTOSH DISCOVERED A NEW KIND OF APPLE ON HIS FARM IN ONTARIO, CANADA. HE NAMED IT THE McINTOSH RED.
THE ROME APPLE WAS DISCOVERED IN OHIO’S ROME TOWNSHIP IN 1816.
LEGEND HAS IT THAT MARIE ANN SMITH DISCOVERED THE GRANNY SMITH APPLE IN AUSTRALIA. IN THE 1860S, SHE THREW AWAY A PILE OF CRAB APPLES. A NEW KIND OF TREE SPROUTED FROM THE SEEDS. ITS GREEN APPLES WERE CALLED GRANNY SMITHS IN HER HONOR.
IN 1872, JESSE HIATT DISCOVERED AN UNUSUAL SEEDLING IN HIS APPLE ORCHARD IN PERU, IOWA. HE CUT IT DOWN TWICE. BUT IT KEPT GROWING BACK. IT FINALLY GREW INTO A TREE THAT PRODUCED PRIZE-WINNING APPLES. A JUDGE IN AN APPLE-TASTING CONTEST IN MISSOURI SAID THE APPLES WERE “DELICIOUS.” THE LABEL STUCK, AND THE APPLES WERE CALLED RED DELICIOUS.
THE FUJI APPLE IS A POPULAR APPLE THAT WAS INTRODUCED IN 1962. JAPANESE RESEARCHERS BLENDED TWO KINDS OF APPLES TOGETHER TO MAKE IT.
NEW KINDS OF APPLES ARE BEING GROWN ALL THE TIME.
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