Johnny Appleseed; 4th in series

OHIO'S HISTORICAL MARKERS
Richland County

The third marker on Mansfield's square commemorates Johnny Appleseed and a run he is thought to have made in 1813 from Mansfield to Mt. Vernon for reinforcements when an Indian attack was believed to be imminent.

While Appleseed is often thought of as a fictional character, he was very much a real person; born in Massachusetts in 1774 as John Chapman.  He was a skilled nurseryman who loved apple trees and supplied seeds and tree saplings to pioneers as population growth spread through what is now OH, then known as the eastern edge of the Northwest Territories.

A young Admiral Perry had just defeated the British in the Battle of Lake Erie then and news from explorers like Lewis and Clark was just becoming known when Appleseed ran through the forest for help. 

Appleseed was a vegetarian and wore raggedy clothes.  Some claim he wore a tin hat when he traveled and once escaped horrible weather by sleeping in a hollow tree--with a mother bear.  Sometimes the line between truth and fiction becomes blurry.

Problems between the pioneers and the Indians were quite real then, however.  The infamous Copus massacre had just happened the previous September.

At the time of Appleseed's run there were two blockhouses on the Mansfield square, refuges for local settlers from the violence of the War of 1812 and from Indian attack.  Ohio had become a state just 10 years earlier and 90 per cent of Ohio's area remained heavily forested.

Parts of one of those blockhouses were used in the recent reconstruction of the blockhouse in South Park and Johnny's name is firmly etched in my memory banks as the Johnny Appleseed Squares, the name honored by my square dancing group.

He died in 1845 and is buried in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  Somewhere.  There even is some dispute about the year of his death.

But there is no dispute about his devout lifestyle and accomplishments.