Thursday Tales: Johnny Appleseed

Since it is almost the fourth of July I decided to go with an american folk tale- Johnny Appleseed. It seems appropriate as many an American will be consuming a slice of apple pie this weekend. As a child I remember watching the Disney Johnny Appleseed cartoon more times than I can count. I watch an opening clip of the cartoon on Youtube and it brought me right back to being a kid.  A time when I would be sipping a glass of milk while thickly slathering peanut butter onto apple slices and humming along to the catchy tunes they sang.





Johnny Appleseed was actually a real person. John Chapman lived in the late 1700's- early 1800's. According to Wikipedia he " was an American pioneer nurseryman who introduced apple trees to large parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, as well as the northern counties of present day West Virginia. He became an American legend while still alive, due to his kind, generous ways, his leadership in conservation, and the symbolic importance he attributed to apples".

Apparently, Johnny Appleseed is always portrayed as just randomly throwing around appleseeds but the truth is that he developed nurseries and earned a profit from them. Also most of his apples were not suitable for eating but rather they were used to make alcohol. That's definitely something Disney failed to mention. Also it seems ironic as he was a devoutly religious man. He was a missionary for The New Church.



Thursday's Tales are hosted by CarolsNotebook. Stop by and see what she has read this week or better yet join in and read your own tale this week.