Holmes County Republican. [volume] (Millersburg, Holmes Co., O. [Ohio]) 1870-1895, 1871-10-26

4 a
son asmile or word Niil banish, '55sTilSb
Useless thoughts Of esmlng care. . tfia
| Then all well your assigned station. bGe
Though it be the humblest part $500,
Gods reckoning VIII plainly show,
Who has done the best and most; l,f 10 Iii
For TO Him no king Is greater, nj rer.
l Than the poorest serf OF EARN, Ai iH-'
He cares not whether high low, at- 3,
Judges only by our WORTH
| gul
JOHNNY APPLESEED. ii
| A PIONEER HERO. c !.
The sffar West" is rapidly becom-
ing only traditional designation;
railroads have destroyed the romance
lof frontier life, or have surrounded
It with so many appliances of ciyili-
.ation that the pioneer character is
rapidly becoming mythical. The
men and women who obtain their
groceries and dry goods from New
York by rail in a few hours have
nothing in common with those who,
fifty years ago, .spacked" salt hun
dred miles to make their mush pal
atable, and could only exchange
corn and wheat for molasses and cal
leo by making long and perilous
voyages in fiat-boats down the Ohio
and Mississippi river to New Or
leans. Two generations of frontier
lives have accumulated stores of mar
rative which, like the small but
beautiful tributaries Of great rivers,
are forgotten in the broad sweep of
the larger current of history. The
march Of Titans sometimes tramples
out the memory of smaller but more
useful lives, and sensational glare
often cclipses more modest but pur-
er lights. This has been the case in
the popular demand for the dime
novel dilutions of Fenimore Coop
er's romancesr of border life, which
have preserved the records of Indi-
an rapine and atrocity as the only
memorials of pioneer history. But
the early days of Western settle
menti witnessed sublimer heroisms
than those ofIhuman torture, and
nobler victories than those of the
tomahawk and scalping-knife. Il si
Among the heroes of endurance
that was voluntary, and of action
that was creative and not sanguina-
ry, there was one man whose name,
seldom mentioned now save by some
of the few surviving pioneers, de-
serves to be perpetuated. } br-
The first reliable trace of our mod
est hero finds him in the Territory
of Ohio, in 1901, with a horse-load
of apple seeds, which he planted in
various places on and about the bor-
ders of Licking Creek the first or
chard thus originated by him being
on the farm of Isaac IStadden, in
what is now known as Licking Co.,
in the State of Ohio. During the
five succeeding years, although he
was undoubtedly following the same
strange occupation, we have no aui
thentic account of his movements
until we reach pleasant spring day
in 1906, when a pioneer settler in
Jefferson county, Ohio, noticed a
peculiar craft, with a remarkable oc-
cupant and curious cargo, slowly
dropping down with the current of
the Ohio River. 1t was "Johnny
Appleseed," by which name Jona-
than Chapman was afterward known
in every log cabin from the Ohio
River to the Northern lakes, and
westward to the prairies of what is
now the State of Indiana. With
two canoes lashed together he was
transporting a load of apple seeds
to the Western frontier, for the pur-
pose Of creating orchards on the
farthest verge of white settlements.
With his canoes he passed down, the
Ohio to Marietta, where he enter
ed the Muskingum, ascending the
stream of that river until he reached
the mouth of the Walhonding, or
White Woman Creek, and still on
ward, up the Mohican, into the
Black Fork, to the head of naviga-
tion, in the region now known as
Ashland and Richland counties, on
the line of the Pittsburgh and Fort
Wayne Railroad, in Ohio. A long
and toilsome voyage it was, as a
glance at the map will show, and
must have occupied a great deal of
time, as the lonely traveller stopped
at every inviting spot to plant the
seeds and make his infant nurseries.
These are the first well authenti-
Gated facts in the history of iona
than Chapman, whose birth, there
| isgood reason for believing, occur
red in Boston, Massachusetts, in
l775. According to this, which was
his own statement in one of his less
reticent moods, he was, at the time
of his appearance on Licking Creek,
twenty-six years Of age, and wheth
er impelled in his eccentricities by
some absolute misery of the heart
which could only find relief in in
cessant motion, or governed by a
benevolent monomania, his whole
after-life was devoted to the work of
planting apple seeds in remote
places. The seeds he gathered from
The cider-presses Of Western Penn
sylvania; but his canoe voyage in
1906 appears to have been the only
occasion upon which he adopted
that method of transporting them,
as all his subsequent journeys were
made on foot. Having planted his
stock of seeds, he would return to
Pennsylvania for fresh supply, and
as sacks made of any less substan-
tial fabric would not endure the
hard usage Of the long trip through
forests dense with underbrush and
briers, he provided himself with
leathern bags. Securely packed,
the seeds were conveyed, sometimes
on the back of horse, and not un-
frequently on his own shoulders,
either over n part Of the old Indian
trail that led from Fort Duquesne to
Detroit, by way of Fort Sandusky,
or over what is styled in the appen-