11 Chapter 9 Hard Work

Chapter 9 Hard Work After the war ended, Johnny began buying more land. Some of his orchards were less than an acre in size. Others covered hundreds of acres. He took care of his orchards all by himself for most of his life.

Sometimes he needed help for certain jobs. When he was forty-five, he hired two boys for a few days. They helped him build a one-room cabin on some of his wilderness land. Each night, they shared his simple dinner, then slept on the ground beside Johnny's campfire. Wolves howled and owls screeched all around them. At first, the boys were scared, but Johnny told them not to worry. He was used to such things and knew the animals wouldn't hurt them.

Johnny's brother-in-law often helped in his orchards. However, none of Johnny's family knew how much land he owned or how much money he had. He sometimes buried his money among the roots of a favorite tree. He didn't trust banks. America's banks got in trouble in the 1820s. Many businesses failed. Times were hard for Johnny, too. Squatters took over some of his land. And he also had trouble repaying some loans. He soon lost all of his orchards in Pennsylvania and many of those in Ohio. But he didn't give up. Around 1830, he planted his first orchard in Indiana. By now most people knew him as Johnny Appleseed rather than John Chapman. In the

following years, he bought 140 acres for only $250. He worked in his Indiana orchards for the rest of his life.

Johnny never got married or had children. Growing up in a noisy house as a boy may be one reason he preferred to live alone!

Still, there were many rumors about his love life. One says that he fell in love with a woman named Dorothy Durand. The story goes that she loved him, too. But their families kept them apart because they believed in different religions. Dorothy died of a broken heart. Johnny never got over her. He often returned to place apple blossoms on her grave. In the last years of his life, Johnny owned thousands of apple trees and lots of land, perhaps as many as twelve hundred acres. This didn't mean he was rich, but it's likely he was too busy to go farther west. Besides, settlement on the West Coast hadn't gathered much steam yet. But who knows—if he had lived long enough he might have beaten settlers to the Pacific coast and planted apple trees there, too.