Resurrection of the Wild by Deborah Fleming
Author:Deborah Fleming
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Kent State University Press
Chapter Seven
John Chapman, 1774–1845
FIVE MILES WEST of my place lies the site where the native village called Greentown stood overlooking the Black Fork River. I knew the location was close but did not know exactly where until the local Johnny Appleseed Memorial Society placed a sign on Route 39 two miles north of Perrysville. One October day in 2006, I parked my truck in front of an old barn and followed a tractor path westward through farmland and woods to the river. My interest lay in the historical significance of the place but also in the character of John Chapman, popularly known as Johnny Appleseed, whom I had read about and knew to be much more interesting than the cartoon character that popular culture has made of him. He had lived for a while in the territory that became Jefferson County, where I grew up, later migrating to Licking County, where I also lived, and then north to what is now Ashland County, my current home. In a way, I followed his footsteps.
The Memorial Society’s sign explains that instability among the native people resulted from military expeditions into the area after the Revolutionary War. Some Delaware and Mingo joined many Shawnee who moved as early as 1788 to the place named Greentown for Thomas Green of Connecticut, a Tory who migrated westward and lived among the Shawnee. John Chapman, local preacher James Copus, the Shawnee chief called the Prophet, and a Delaware leader called Captain Pipe frequently visited the settlement, which by 1812 included more than 150 dwellings.
In 2013 the Johnny Appleseed Memorial Society bought the land on which Greentown stood and created a theme park with a log house (built in imitation of Shawnee lodges) and wooded trails leading to sites where the native people cooked and boiled sugar maple syrup. Years earlier, in the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District of Ashland County, about two miles south of the village of Mifflin, a group called the Johnny Appleseed Heritage Center Inc., headed by a local man named William Smith, had built an outdoor drama park on 118 acres of “managed” forest. Smith also built on the property a naturally contoured amphitheater with a seating capacity of sixteen hundred; an indoor auditorium; an interactive, handicapped-accessible museum; and a learning center. The project received both public and private funds from, among others, the J. M. Smucker Company in nearby Orrville (which makes jams and jellies) and the Ohio Arts and Sports Facilities Commission. The entire complex, opened in 2004, hosted an annual festival and presented living history reenactments similar to those at Schoenbrunn Village near New Philadelphia in Tuscarawas County. Due to financial difficulties, the performances were discontinued after 2006.
Let me state here that this will not be a diatribe against historical theme parks or the effort to create popular history from fragments of a romanticized past. I rejoice at the conservation of 118 wooded acres, which may become old-growth forest. My few objections to outdoor drama and theme parks stem from
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