>>> Urbana is out in farm country, north and west from Columbus, and it is a town rich in historic architecture.

The Scioto Street Historic District, when you come in from the east, is full of great architecture.

The downtown is really intact, around a square with a statue.

It is a really nice town, but it has some historical associations that are pretty interesting.

This is Johnny Appleseed country, and we're going to learn something about Johnny today, things I don't even know, and I'm looking forward to this visit.

Hi Michaela.

>>> Hey, Jeff!

Welcome to the Johnny Appleseed Museum.

>>> Well, thanks so much.

And you are in an incredible house.

I had no idea this was here.

Tell me about the building we're in.

>>> This building is known locally as Brown Hall, but originally it was a private home.

It was built by Dr. Thomas Moses and his wife, Hannah Cranch, and completed in 1880.

Dr. Thomas Moses was a professor of natural sciences and president of Urbana College, around the corner from us.

They lived in this home for about nine years until it was bought and sold and bought and sold until eventually it was given to Urbana College as a women's dormitory.

So the second and third floors was where students lived.

>>> Well, it seems to have survived really intact.

I mean, there's an original mirror, the fireplace, the tile on the floor.

The wood floor is in beautiful shape.

>>> Well, thank you.

It's taken a lot of work to keep it that way, but we're very proud of it.

>>> Places like this take a lot of loving care, but we're at the Johnny Appleseed Museum, so tell me about that.

>>> Yeah, of course.

Follow me to the next room.

>>> So here we are.

There's a lot of story here.

>>> It's a big story, and we had a really big challenge when we were reopening the museum.

How do we pick between the man behind the myth and the myth itself everyone knows and loves?

So we sort of did a little bit of both.

We start in this room and we tell his story starting September 26th, 1774, with his birth in Lemister, Massachusetts.

>>> So he was a New England person.

He was.

I know him the name Johnny Apples.

Of course, that's not his real last name.

Chapman was his real last name.

And I have to admit, I have this image, and I must have picked it up somewhere, that he went around with a cooking pot on his head.

I'm guessing that's part of the myth.

>>> Well, you're not alone in that image.

It's one of the most frequently asked questions.

And you know, people are still divided on it.

What we do know about Johnny Appleseed is he was an avid storyteller.

He loved to entertain people.

So is it possible he did it once or twice for a laugh?

Absolutely.

But did he actually wear a pot on his head?

Not really.

>>> I suspected that was the case.

When did he get involved with apples?

I mean, that's the story there.

What happened?

>>> Apples actually as an idea were very important to pioneer America.

They were more or less used as a currency.

So as a young man, after he leaves Limmister, Massachusetts, he sort of travels down New York and into Pennsylvania.

And it's in the Pittsburgh area he learns about the trade of being an orchardist, which is super important.

People have this idea of this carefree fellow, but he was actually a really intelligent businessman.

People needed people to plant apple trees for them so they could claim their territory.

>>> Now did he promote different species of apples?

Varieties, I guess you'd call them.

>>> Well, this is a very interesting answer, but maybe a disappointing one.

When we think about apples, we think about our grocery store, the Red Delicious, the Cosmic Crisp, the Jazz Apple, but every apple Johnny Appleseed planted was actually called a spitter apple.

You can guess why they got that name.

>>> Take one bite and... >>> Spit it right back out, exactly.

They're a lot like modern day crab apples, not very good for snacking on.

>>> So this really begins to chip away at the myth that these were to feed people.

It really, it went much farther than that.

>>> Absolutely, he was an integral part of society and he was not alone in doing this, but he was probably the most prominent But what makes him even more interesting is the way he went about doing things I'd really like to show you around the missionary room and sort of explain a little bit about why he did what he did come with me Here's why I wanted to bring you into this room.

This is Johnny Appleseed's Bible.

Wow.

A lot of people didn't know Johnny Appleseed was a missionary for the Swedenborgian faith, a religion that says God is in everything and that includes all people, all animals, and all plants.

It makes a lot more sense thinking about this folkloric hero who's sort of a pacifist and known to be a part of nature when we realize He believes spiritually God is a part of the nature he's in.

>>> It certainly makes sense that somebody thinks that way, especially in that time period.

>>> Absolutely.

And we have his Bible today, more importantly, because of his half-sister, Pursus.

When John Chapman passes away, March 18th, 1845, his sister goes to collect his belongings, which include his Bible.

>>> And how did it make its way to this museum?

>>> It was passed down through her family of descendants.

The current descendants of Pursus Broom still live in Ohio today and have a close relationship with the museum.

So they really graciously allowed us to borrow their family Bible to put on display.

>>> Well, once again, the appropriateness of this house for being the museum is just wonderful.

I mean, there's a terrific mantelpiece here, original windows.

I'm guessing this maybe was a dining room.

>>> Most likely, but what I think is most fabulous is the original homeowners were also prominent Swedenborgians, just like Johnny, and we see that come through, especially in the woodwork.

There's a lot of symbolism of plants and animals and nature, especially, so even the homeowners were sort of thinking along the same lines that Johnny was.

>>> Now, as far as you know, would they have known him?

>>> He would've passed away long before they were here, but we do know that John Chapman knew John H. James, the gentleman who donated the land for Urbana College.

We have on record that he did pass through the Urbana area, actually, talking to John H. James to seek legal advice of all things regarding whether or not he still had legal claim to an orchard he had left behind a while ago.

>>> Any record of how many orchards he was responsible for creating?

>>> Exact numbers on the orchards are sort of hit or miss because they changed hands so many times.

But at the time of his death, we do know he had over 1,200 acres of land in his name alone.

>>> Wow, that's a lot of land.

>>> And it's spread across multiple states.

So it's no wonder that even though he has all this land at the time of his passing, it all goes to Pursus and when it's all said and done, it boils down to more or less the modern equivalent of $400 or $500.

So he was very, very wealthy, but mostly in assets, intangible things.

>>> Well, this is really interesting.

What else can you tell me?

>>> Well, let's talk a little bit about why apples at all.

>>> Aha!

Here's the business end of it.

>>> Yes, maybe a little less fun, but just as important.

>>> Absolutely.

>>> Almost every household would have a cider press just like this one.

You would put your apples through the chute here, you would crank it, and all of the byproducts of the mushed and crushed and taken apart apple would fall into a bucket here, which had a cheesecloth.

You would take that cheesecloth of waste and you would attach this weight and crank it like a screw to press all of the juice out of that mush, and then the juice would run out of the bottom where it could be capped and kept until it became alcoholic.

>>> Okay, so it was a two-step process, you didn't squash the apples for juice, you ground them up first to kind of a pulp, and the pulp is what you compress to create a liquid to drain out the liquid.

Exactly.

>>> Exactly, and that pulp was called pumice and that's where Johnny Appleseed actually gets his first seeds for his first orchards was the Pumice of the Metzgerville cider press in Pennsylvania.

No one else was using it.

So he found a way to make use out of it >>> So the seeds were small enough that they survived that compression process and that straining process.

>>> Yeah, absolutely.

You could pick them out, you could wash them off, and take them to plant.

>>> Boy, I'm learning more and more about the whole process.

Johnny Appleseed was a really interesting guy.

>>> We appreciate the man and the myth, because without Johnny Appleseed, the character, we wouldn't remember John Chapman.

And without John Chapman, we wouldn't have Johnny Appleseed.

So we have to celebrate both and sort of take the good, leave the rest, and move on.

Just as long as people learn something when they leave, then we've done our job.

>>> We've done such a great job taking care of Johnny's legacy, dealing with both myth and fact, blending them together, making a real learning process.

>>> Oh, well, thank you.

I'd really like to show you, if you've got the time, some of his legacy that continues today.

>>> Oh, I'd like to see that too.

>>> Come on.

>>> So Johnny Appleseed and Urbana, it's not necessarily the logical place to celebrate him, or is it?

>>> He spent 20 to 30 years of his life in Ohio, but all in the area of Mansfield.

So we get this a lot.

Why Urbana?

Well, the answer to that is the Swedenborgian connection.

>>> Ah, of course.

>>> I told you his faith meant a ot to him, and Swedenborgianism is really what sort of built up the area of Urbana.

A lot of the affluent people of early Urbana were Swedenborgians, including the college itself.

So, Swedenborgians are the ones who collected Johnny Appleseed's memorabilia, and they gave it to the college.

>>> Well, obviously these are apple trees that we're passing, so you must be trying the different varieties.

>>> But not quite, so these are all grafted from a tree that Johnny Appleseed himself planted.

>>> Ah, so it's continuing the bloodline.

>>> It is, it's a little bit of our legacy, continuing his legacy.

>>> Well, I'm glad to know you're continuing that sort of Johnny Appleseed bloodline, and the apple tree is just continuing into the 21st century and beyond.

Tell me more about your educational efforts.

>>> We're a museum first and foremost, so we want to make sure that we are part of the community.

So we opened this beautiful children's garden before the museum was ever open, just trying to get people interested in showing up and seeing what we were doing.

And now we're open for tours every week, which has been wonderful, but we're ready to get out into the world.

We don't want people to forget about Johnny Appleseed.

So as a group, we have the society, which is our volunteer group, and they want to take Johnny Appleseed to schools, to festivals.

They want to be able to bring Johnny Appleseed to the people who can't come to us.

So as a museum, we're really, really focused on building up educational materials, especially, and getting them into the hands of teachers and in classrooms.

So we cater a lot to young kids, school-age kids, homeschool groups, but we also see people of all ages who just wanna learn more or remember that character they learned about when they were in school.

>>> Well, I love how you've taken a really important house and sort of woven it into the history of the course of Urbana, but Johnny Appleseed as well, because there are real connections here.

Thank you so much for a wonderful tour.

>>> Oh, thank you.

>>> And best for the future.

>>> Oh, thanks for saying that.