This is Angela O'Dell and you are listening to real cool history for kids.

A podcast show featuring history told from a distinctly biblical worldview perspective.

Welcome to an adventure.

Welcome to episode 134 of real cool history for kids.

This episode is for Josiah Shedal, who wanted me to tell the story of Johnny Appleseed.

Hi Josiah, this one's for you.

Over the last 200 years or so, the story of Johnny Appleseed has become, well, it's really just

become a legend, a kind of a myth, an exaggerated and fictionalized version of a true story about a true man who actually lived.

When I tell stories like this one, I think about how specific people's life stories end up being

made into a fairy tale. But often, their real life stories are so much more interesting than any fairy tale version.

When my kids were little, they used to enjoy watching a classic Disney movie called Melody Time.

This movie was actually three short stories put altogether in one video.

The story of Johnny Appleseed was one of those short stories and I always

will remember hearing my kids singing along to the song that Johnny Appleseed

sings in there about how the Lord blessed him, but the sun and the rain and the

apple seeds. In that cartoon, Johnny Appleseed was a funny-looking little man with raggedy clothes and bare feet and a

cooking pot for a hat and a menagerie of animal friends. But how much of that is actually true? What was the real Johnny apple seed like?

Did he really travel all over the wilderness planting apple trees and every clearing he found?

Did he carry a Bible with him and sing about how the Lord was being good to him?

Well, some of these details are taken from the real Johnny

apple seed and some of them, well, they were added to adapt the story to a children's cartoon. So let's hear the real story.

The real Johnny Appleseed's name was John Chapman.

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