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Apple-blossoms that gladdened the hearts, and fruits that brought comfort and pleasure to the rude firesides of the earliest settlers in the Middle West, were the living memorials of an apostle of beauty, peace and social service who is now almost forgotten. Explorer, missionary, fur-trader and conqueror preceded Jonathan Chapman, the nurseryman of Puritan breed, whose identity was lost in the devoted Johnny Appleseed. His day was that of the pioneers who crossed the Alleghany Mountains; of the river boatmen who navigated the uncharted waterways of the old Northwest Territory, and of the Indian-fighters of the last border wars. All of these played their honorable parts in the winning of an empire of forest and prairie. But no one of them labored with greater courage, over such a large region of country, or toiled with the unselfishness and un-tiring zeal of this heroic orchardist. Half mystic, half poet, a lover of nature and of his fellow-men, his long life of solitary and perilous wandering, always in the van of migration, was consecrated to the blossoming of the wilderness. Three-quarters of a century ago he was still a loved and revered guest in the cabins of our grandfathers. His orchards lived after him. Some of his trees may be standing today; but the man who planted them has receded to a dim, legendary figure. Let us recover what may be known of him, restore him to his time and place, recall the almost incredible conditions under which he did his inspired task. Let us give him again his meed of love and gratitude for a beautiful life of self-sacrifice that asked no reward, and that came, in old age, to some end obscure and lonely. This book was originally published in 1915.
