public-domain image Eccentric and saintly, Johnny Appleseed is an unlikely member of the pantheon of American folk superheros that includes such he-men as Davey Crockett, Paul Bunyan, and John Henry. Like Crockett, Johnny Appleseed was a real person, though his name was John Chapman. Born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, in the early days of the American Revolution, Chapman grew up in Westfield and headed west to become a frontier nurseryman, bachelor, and sometime Swedenborgian evangelist. He gleaned apple seeds from cider mills and eked out a living planting them and selling saplings to settlers.