“Finally, the cliché is peeled away and the essence of this utterly American character is so revealing. John Chapman comes alive here and it is a thrilling experience to escape the specific gravity of the decades of myth” (Ken Burns). This portrait of Johnny Appleseed restores the flesh-and-blood man beneath the many myths. It captures the boldness of an iconic American and the sadness of his last years, as the frontier marched past him, ever westward. And it shows how death liberated the legend and made of Johnny a barometer of the nation’s feelings about its own heroic past and the supposed Eden it once had been. Howard Means does for America’s inner frontier what Stephen Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage did for its western one. “Engaging . . . Means scrubs away nearly two centuries of rumor and myth to uncover the truth about 19th-century pioneer nurseryman John Chapman. . . . Mean’s meticulous research reveals Chapman as an ascetic, conservationist and pacifist well-suited to serve as patron saint of today’s faith-based ‘creation care’ movement.” -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch “We all know the caricature, but few of us know the man. Howard Means produces a feast of a story that strips away the myths of this folk-tale hero and gives us the real John Chapman and the rough-and-tumble world he lived in. This is a thoroughly fascinating and fun book.” --Jay Winik, author of April 1865 and The Great Upheaval “Johnny Appleseed is one of the great myths of our childhood. With insight and a lively touch, Howard Means tells us the story of the real Johnny Appleseed, John Chapman, a mystic and visionary who turns out to be a most memorable American character.” --Evan Thomas, author of The War Lovers “Means supports the legend with hard-earned fact in his portrait of Chapman as a ‘nurseryman; religious zealot; real-estate dabbler’ and even altruistic capitalist.” -- The Wall Street Journal “Delightfully wry and perceptive . . . a captivating achievement in Americana.” -- Booklist (Starred Review) Howard Means is a former senior editor and senior writer at Washingtonian Magazine . He is the author of many books, including The Avenger Takes His Place: Andrew Johnson and the 45 Days That Changed the Nation ; Colin Powell: A Biography ; and The Banana Sculptor, the Purple Lady, and the All-Night Swimmer , coauthored with Susan Sheehan. He lives in Virginia. 1. RIGHT FRESH FROM HEAVEN Near sunset, one day in mid-March 1845, a seventy-year-old man named John Chapman appeared at the door of a cabin along the banks of the St. Joseph River, a few miles north of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Barefoot, dressed in coarse pantaloons and a coffee sack with holes cut out for his head and arms, Chapman had walked fifteen miles that day through mixed snow and rain to repair a bramble fence that protected one of his orchards. Now, he sought a roof over his head at the home of William Worth and his family—a request readily granted. Chapman had stayed with the Worths before on those few occasions when he felt a need to be out of the weather, a little more than five weeks in all over the previous five-plus years. Inside, as was his custom, Chapman refused a place at table, taking a bowl of bread and milk by the hearth—or maybe on the chill of the front stoop, staring at the sunset. Accounts vary. The weather might have cleared. Afterward, also a custom, he regaled his hosts with news “right fresh from heaven” in a voice that, one frontier diarist wrote, “rose denunciatory and thrilling, strong and loud as the roar of wind and waves, then soft and soothing as the balmy airs that quivered the morning-glory leaves about his gray beard.” One version of events has him reciting the Beatitudes, from the Gospel According to St. Matthew: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. …” That could be, but for last words—and this was to be his final lucid night on earth—the Beatitudes are almost too perfect, like those morning-glory leaves fluttering in the old gray beard. More likely, Chapman expounded for the gathered Worth family on the “spiritual truths” of the Bible, its hidden codex, a subject for him of inexhaustible fascination. John Chapman slept on the hearth, by the fire, that night. On that everyone agrees. By morning, a fever had “settled on his lungs,” according to one person present, and rendered him incapable of speech. Within days, perhaps hours, he was dead, a victim of “winter plague,” a catch-all diagnosis that dated back to the Middle Ages and included everything from pneumonia and influenza to the cold-weather rampages of the Black Death. Whatever carried him away, Chapman almost certainly did not suffer. The physician who pronounced him dying later said that he had never seen a man so placid in his final passage. Years afterward, Worth family members would descr