# Johnny Appleseed was bringing the gift of alcohol to the frontier. He was the American Dionysus. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 5, 2010, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-appleseed-was-bringing-the-gift-of-alcohol-to-the-frontier-he-was-the-american-dionysus/545582 "2010-07-05T03:36:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-appleseed-was-bringing-the-gift-of-alcohol-to-the-frontier-he-was-the-american-dionysus/545582/1 "2010-07-05T03:36:47Z")
This is different take on Johnny Appleseed than I’ve heard before. [Interesting article re the apple in America.](http://michaelpollan.com/interviews/author-michael-pollan-talks-about-the-history-of-the-apple/) > [@](#): > > Mr. POLLAN: People didn’t go to their frontier without their apple seeds and this is why Johnny Appleseed was such an important figure. You know, when I started researching the apple, I thought he was just a comic book, you know, one of these legends like Paul Bunyan. I really did not know he was a historical figure, but he was. He’s just not as we’re told he was. Johnny Appleseed was bringing the gift of alcohol to the frontier. That’s why he was so popular. That’s why he was welcome in every cabin in Ohio. He was the American Dionysus. He was the guy bringing the booze. > > LEVINE: Few humans have obliged the needs of a plant as much as John Chapman or Johnny Appleseed. He was an evolving species’ dream. His zealous attentions flowered across the country and bore a mind-boggling diversity of fruit. Most wild apples were spitters, too tart or mushy to eat. But spurred by appetite, curiosity and a market economy, farmers began to cultivate their most sweetly fruited trees. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-appleseed-was-bringing-the-gift-of-alcohol-to-the-frontier-he-was-the-american-dionysus/545582/2 "2010-07-05T03:37:57Z")
Yeah, he goes into a good deal of detail about this in _Botany of Desire_. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-appleseed-was-bringing-the-gift-of-alcohol-to-the-frontier-he-was-the-american-dionysus/545582/3 "2010-07-05T06:24:36Z")
Are we talking hard cider here? Because if we are … I’ll drink to that! ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-appleseed-was-bringing-the-gift-of-alcohol-to-the-frontier-he-was-the-american-dionysus/545582/4 "2010-07-05T07:17:12Z")
Well, Johnny Appleseed was quite a character, and he was dedicated to his cause, so it’s easy to write articles about him for kids, while leaving out the alcohol aspect. And if the Delicious was the best tasting apple that Jesse Hiatt had ever tasted, then I feel sorry for him. I’ve always found it to be mealy and bland. Those are good qualities in a potato, but not in an apple. And I looooove cider. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-appleseed-was-bringing-the-gift-of-alcohol-to-the-frontier-he-was-the-american-dionysus/545582/5 "2010-07-05T07:56:49Z")
If you read the article or book, it says that most apples were pretty much inedible out of hand until the Red Delicious. Which isn’t mealy when it’s fresh. ---
**Author:** ![velvetjones](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/5f9b8f/32.png) [@velvetjones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/velvetjones)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-appleseed-was-bringing-the-gift-of-alcohol-to-the-frontier-he-was-the-american-dionysus/545582/6 "2010-07-05T13:11:20Z")
I’ve also heard that he was a [Swedenborgian](http://swedenborg.org) and also was spreading the word about that particular brand of christianity. ---
**Author:** ![velvetjones](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/5f9b8f/32.png) [@velvetjones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/velvetjones)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-appleseed-was-bringing-the-gift-of-alcohol-to-the-frontier-he-was-the-american-dionysus/545582/7 "2010-07-05T13:20:36Z")
From the Swedenborg web site: > [@](#): > > The unique Swedenborgian convert, John Chapman, is better known in American folklore as Johnny Appleseed. In addition to his legendary sowing of seeds in the Midwestern wilderness, Johnny Appleseed carried with him all of the Swedenborgian publications he could procure and distributed them wherever the opportunity was presented. ---
**Author:** ![GilaB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8e7dd6/32.png) [@GilaB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GilaB)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2010, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-appleseed-was-bringing-the-gift-of-alcohol-to-the-frontier-he-was-the-american-dionysus/545582/8 "2010-07-06T04:09:27Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > And if the Delicious was the best tasting apple that Jesse Hiatt had ever tasted, then I feel sorry for him. I’ve always found it to be mealy and bland. Those are good qualities in a potato, but not in an apple. Have you ever had a Delicious from an old tree, from before the variety was standardized to the sort you buy in stores nowadays? They don’t look much like the tall, uniformly deep red, almost rectangular-prism-shaped ones you see now - they’re much smaller, rounder, more classically apple shaped. They taste wonderful. They’re juicy, sweet without being too sweet, with a good crunch to them. They just don’t store and ship as well as the modern variants, which weren’t bred for flavor. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2010, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-appleseed-was-bringing-the-gift-of-alcohol-to-the-frontier-he-was-the-american-dionysus/545582/9 "2010-07-06T05:51:04Z")
> [@needscoffee](#): > > If you read the article or book, it says that most apples were pretty much inedible out of hand until the Red Delicious. Which isn’t mealy when it’s fresh. This looks snarky. I didn’t mean it to be snarky. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2010, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-appleseed-was-bringing-the-gift-of-alcohol-to-the-frontier-he-was-the-american-dionysus/545582/10 "2010-07-06T05:54:48Z")
Well, you do need some coffee. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2010, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-appleseed-was-bringing-the-gift-of-alcohol-to-the-frontier-he-was-the-american-dionysus/545582/11 "2010-07-06T10:45:32Z")
> [@GilaB](#): > > Have you ever had a Delicious from an old tree, from before the variety was standardized to the sort you buy in stores nowadays? They don’t look much like the tall, uniformly deep red, almost rectangular-prism-shaped ones you see now - they’re much smaller, rounder, more classically apple shaped. They taste wonderful. They’re juicy, sweet without being too sweet, with a good crunch to them. They just don’t store and ship as well as the modern variants, which weren’t bred for flavor. No, I haven’t had such a Delicious apple. That sounds like a pear to me, though. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2010, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-appleseed-was-bringing-the-gift-of-alcohol-to-the-frontier-he-was-the-american-dionysus/545582/12 "2010-07-06T12:55:28Z")
As I’ve mentioned in another thread, it isn’t obvious to me that Appleseed’s apples could _only_ be used for hard cider. Granted, this really _was_ the use most apples went to in the nineteenth century (just visit someplace like Sturbridge Village, and they’ll tell you). But such “inedible” apples could also be used for apple cider vinegar, and vinegar was very widely used in that era for cooking, preserving, cleaning, and in the making of “shrub” and other such things. In addition, it seems far more likely to me that Appleseed was planting those orchards as a source of rootstock for edible varieties. There was a thriving business in grafters that came around and would sell and emplace fruit buds from edible trees into your rootstock – and it took the rootstock about seven years to grow – which is about the time before the settlers came that John Chapman started his apple trees growing. I don’t know why Pollan – who clearly researched his book very heavily 9I was lucky enough to see the TV version of his _Botany of Desire_ recently) overlooked this salient possibility. ---
**Author:** ![Roycerson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/5fc32e/32.png) [@Roycerson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roycerson)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-appleseed-was-bringing-the-gift-of-alcohol-to-the-frontier-he-was-the-american-dionysus/545582/13 "2010-09-08T03:10:43Z")
[QUOTE=[http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2141/whats-the-story-with-johnny-appleseed](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2141/whats-the-story-with-johnny-appleseed)] He planted over a hundred thousand square miles of apple orchards in western Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. [/QUOTE] :eek: a mile is 5250 feet. lets call it 5000. Planting trees at 50 ft intervals you can fit 100 trees x 100 trees in a square mile. That’s 10,000 trees. If it takes 10 seconds to plant a tree than 1 square mile can be planted in 27.777 hours w/o breaks or resupply. 27.777 x 100,000 = 2777700 hours to plant 100,000 square miles = 115,000 + days or about 317 years to plant all those trees in ten second intervals with no breaks. I didn’t have to do the math to know that number was far beyond any attempt at honesty. This is my first and last time bothering with the ‘straightdope’. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-appleseed-was-bringing-the-gift-of-alcohol-to-the-frontier-he-was-the-american-dionysus/545582/14 "2010-09-08T09:40:49Z")
> [@Roycerson](#): > > I didn’t have to do the math to know that number was far beyond any attempt at honesty. This is my first and last time bothering with the ‘straightdope’. Considering that the combined land area of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana is only about 120,000 square miles, you’re absolutely correct that it’s a ridiculous number. But don’t leave because of that. We love nit-pickers here. ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-appleseed-was-bringing-the-gift-of-alcohol-to-the-frontier-he-was-the-american-dionysus/545582/15 "2010-09-08T15:38:06Z")
> [@Roycerson](#): > > [QUOTE=[http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2141/whats-the-story-with-johnny-appleseed](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2141/whats-the-story-with-johnny-appleseed)] > He planted over a hundred thousand square miles of apple orchards in western Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. :eek: a mile is 5250 feet. lets call it 5000. Planting trees at 50 ft intervals you can fit 100 trees x 100 trees in a square mile. That’s 10,000 trees. If it takes 10 seconds to plant a tree than 1 square mile can be planted in 27.777 hours w/o breaks or resupply. 27.777 x 100,000 = 2777700 hours to plant 100,000 square miles = 115,000 + days or about 317 years to plant all those trees in ten second intervals with no breaks. I didn’t have to do the math to know that number was far beyond any attempt at honesty. This is my first and last time bothering with the ‘straightdope’. [/QUOTE] Welcome to the Dope. You’ll fit right in. ---
**Author:** ![thirdname](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d07c76/32.png) [@thirdname](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thirdname)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-appleseed-was-bringing-the-gift-of-alcohol-to-the-frontier-he-was-the-american-dionysus/545582/16 "2010-09-08T16:22:45Z")
Maybe it was 100,000 acres? ---
**Author:** ![BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bcef8e/32.png) [@BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2010, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/johnny-appleseed-was-bringing-the-gift-of-alcohol-to-the-frontier-he-was-the-american-dionysus/545582/17 "2010-09-09T01:32:45Z")
> [@thirdname](#): > > Maybe it was 100,000 acres? Maybe he “planted” them in the sense that he gave the farmers the means to do so?