How Johnny Appleseed Grew Into a Folk Hero
25 June 2012
Apple pickers harvest fruit in Massachusetts, the home state of John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed
FAITH LAPIDUS: I’m Faith Lapidus.
STEVE EMBER: And I’m Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program PEOPLE IN AMERICA. Today we tell about a man known as Johnny Appleseed. Many people considered him a hero.
(MUSIC)
FAITH LAPIDUS: Johnny Appleseed was the name given to John Chapman. He planted large numbers of apple trees in what was the American wilderness two hundred years ago. Chapman grew trees and supplied apple seeds to settlers in the middle western Great Lakes area. Two centuries later, some of those trees still produce fruit.
As a result of stories and poems about Chapman’s actions, Johnny Appleseed became an American hero. However, some of the stories told about Johnny Appleseed over the years may not have been really true.
STEVE EMBER: John Chapman was born in Leominster, Massachusetts, in seventeen seventy-four. His father, Nathaniel Chapman, served in America’s war for independence. He fought British troops in the battle of Concord in seventeen seventy-five.
John was the second of three children. Little is known about his childhood. His mother Elizabeth became sick with tuberculosis and died a short time after the birth of her third child. In seventeen eighty, Nathaniel Chapman married Lucy Cooley of Longmeadow, Massachusetts. John and his older sister moved to Longmeadow with their father and his new wife. This new marriage produced ten more children.
最新
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25