A Boyhood for "Johnny Appleseed"
1944; The MIT Press; Volume: 17; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/361705
ISSN1937-2213
Autores Tópico(s)American Literature and Culture
ResumoS TEBBINS PARK in Springfield, Massachusetts, commemorates John Chapman, the famous Appleseed, with an attractive little monument,1 the inscription on which declares in part that Johnny spent his boyhood in this pleasant valley [the valley of the Connecticut River] or somewhere near by. Here he received inspiration for his life work of spreading westward his gospel of beauty and service. About the inspiration one cannot be sure now, of course, for any boy's inspirations are elusive matters after a century and a half, particularly when that boy was John Chapman, who was not brought up to keep a journal or letterbooks, who probably never thought of recording memoirs, and whom folks found very reticent, at least in his old age, about saying anything at all concerning his beginnings. But about the setting for John Chapman's boyhood, the Stebbins Park memorial is probably correct. The aged Johnny Appleseed left distinct impressions among the farmers who remembered him in Ohio and Indiana in the eighteen-thirties and forties that he had come from the vicinity of Springfield.2 That fact was reinforced by the knowledge that certain half-brothers and -sisters had come from there. In later years an erroneous statement in D.A.R. records that John's father, Nathaniel Chapman, had been born in Springfield seemed to clinch the matter.
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