Hillside Community Church (Swedenborgian) in El Cerrito, CA

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Johnny Appleseed—A Swedenborgian

Johnny Appleseed stands in the pantheon of great legendary characters of the American frontier, alongside such luminaries as Daniel Boone and Davey Crockett.  Many people, not realizing that he actually graced the early American landscape, categorize him with mythical folk-heroes such as Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill.  But Johnny Appleseed (born John Chapman, in Leominster, Massachusetts, 1774) made real contributions to the opening of the mid-western territories… contributions still felt today in parts of Ohio and Indiana, where residents point with pride at orchards they claim were original Chapman nurseries.

 

There are churches, too, that point to these same roots.

 

Like many along the frontier – especially those who kept moving rather than settling down – John Chapman was quite a colorful figure.  A 1948 Disney cartoon feature depicts him dressed in a gunnysack, trekking along barefoot, wearing a cooking pot as a hat and scattering appleseed along the trailside as he pushed ever westward.  All of these characteristics save the last may have been true of him at one time or another (the cooking pot for protection in a hailstorm), but Johnny was too accomplished a nurseryman to waste his precious, hand-selected seed, packed in from cider mills in Pennsylvania, so haphazardly.  Chapman was, in reality, a shrewd businessman who saw great opportunity in preparing the way for burgeoning frontier communities with his nurseries.  Apples were a large part of the early American diet; at various times, the law required an orchard on any piece of land to satisfy claims that it was settled.

 

Johnny Appleseed never settled down, though, and not for lack of opportunity.  Whether it was wanderlust, claustrophobia or simply looking for that last, great opportunity, he was a part of an age when many people just kept moving on.  Though his efforts largely succeeded, cash was a rare commodity on the frontier and Chapman never became rich.  A great wealth of stories developed around this singular man; many of them can be found in the celebrated article by W.D. Haley in the November, 1871, issue of Harper’s Magazine (http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/sgml/moa-idx?notisid=abk4014-0043-116).

 

The Harper’s article preserves a bit of the Appleseed legend that has, in many ways, been lost in the secularization of America: John Chapman was zealously Swedenborgian.  How he came upon this faith is not known, but how he helped to spread it is part of his legend.  Haley described in Harper’s the way Johnny would separate Swedenborg’s books (the library replenished when procuring appleseed back in Pennsylvania) into chapters and distribute them, cabin by cabin, in his travels.  He delighted in regaling frontier families with this “news right fresh from heaven”.

 

His work did not go unnoticed.  As early as 1817, news of his missionary efforts reached as far as Manchester, England.  In the journal of the Fifth General Convention of the New Churchmen (the Swedenborgian Church), which convened in Philadelphia in 1822, we find:

 

In the state of Ohio throughout the great work is going on still more extensively.  Besides the society established at Steubenville… and Lebanon and the very numerous church of Cincinnati… one very extraordinary missionary continued to exert, for the spread of divine truth, his modest and humble efforts, which would put the most zealous members to the blush.  We now allude to Mr. John Chapman, from whom we are in the habit of hearing frequently.  His temporal employment consists in preceding the settlements, and sowing nurseries of fruit trees, which he avows to be pursued for the chief purpose of giving him an opportunity of spreading the doctrines throughout the western country.

             In his progress, which neither heat nor cold, swamps nor mountains, are permitted to arrest, he carries on his back all the New Church publications he can procure, and distributes them wherever opportunity is afforded.  So great is his zeal, that he does not hesitate to divide his volumes into parts [which], by repeated calls, enable the readers to peruse the whole in succession.

             Having no family, and inured to hardships of every kind, his operations are unceasing.  He is now employed in traversing the district between Detroit and the closer settlements of Ohio.

             What shall be the reward of such an individual, where, as we are told in the holy writ, “They that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars forever.”

 

We can see in Johnny Appleseed’s shining star many of the fundamental principles of Swedenborgian faith: deep and abiding love for his God, devotion and daily concern for his neighbors and community, activity in the world to serve both.  His love and intent were joined with knowledge and understanding to produce useful results – good fruit, indeed.