Steven Rinella

There's all these different stories about him, but he,

What really threads through it is here's a man that accumulated land, loved to move west, loved to do business.

There's a real capitalist theme through Chapman, yet at the same time, he never enjoyed the benefits of it.

Fantastic, absolutely.

Okay, so he's born in Lemonster, Massachusetts.

And shout out to Florence E. Wheeler, who is a woman in the 60s.

You know those historical societies you find in every town.

They're maybe not focused on the big hits, but they are focused on what happens in their community.

So she is the one.

There were so many rumors about Chapman, nobody knew where he was born.

Some people said that his mother was Native American.

Some people say that his father was a Harvard preacher.

None of that was true.

Florence E. Wheeler, one of these historical society women, really dug into the ledgers, basically, because that's how we find so much of history is who owed who money.

Oh, yeah.

You guys talk about this on the pod.

This is how people were keeping track of things.

And so what we found was he's born of a minute man.

So his dad partook in the Revolutionary War.

His father eventually became a guard of an armory in Springfield, Massachusetts.