Johnny Appleseed: 3/18/1845

70-years-old, he visited his friend William Worth one evening, ate some milk and bread, read out loud from the Bible, laid down on the floor to sleep and never woke up. This was how John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, died on MARCH 18, 1845.

Johnny Appleseed's father, Nathaniel, was a Minuteman who fought the British at Concord in 1775. Johnny Appleseed collected seeds from apple cider presses in western Pennsylvania and planted nurseries from the Alleghenies to central Ohio, giving thousands of seedlings to westward bound pioneers. He lived at harmony with Indians, bringing them medicinal plants. During the War of 1812, Johnny Appleseed heard the British had incited an Indian attack, so he ran 30 miles from Mansfield to Mount Vernon, Ohio, to warn settlers.

Bare foot, wearing a mush pan over his eccentric long hair and an old coffee sack over his shoulders, Johnny Appleseed had a unique devotion to nature and the Bible. He called an apple blossom a "living sermon from God" and often quoted the Sermon on the Mount. Poet William Henry Venable wrote: "Remember Johnny Appleseed - All ye who love the apple - He served his kind by word and deed - In God's grand greenwood chapel."

American Minute with Bill Federer