Steven Rinella

And it's hard not to think that John Chapman wasn't a little bit influenced by this guy in that same way, you know, when you're a young guy and you're looking and you're like, Oh, maybe I could do some version of that, which gets back to that, this land speculation where I'm going to, if you put fruit trees in the ground,

under the expanding colonial and eventually U.S.

American government meant that you were laying claim to that ground.

Yet at the same time, he had no interest in actually settling.

And so that begins his story of he gets past Western Pennsylvania.

His half-brother says, love you, I'm out.

He and the rest of the family.

At some point, he splits.

The dad comes from Longmeadow.

They settle somewhere around Dexter, Ohio.

They settle in Southern Ohio, close to West Virginia.

But Chapman then starts this life of wandering, rambling, planting apple seeds, and running into very much what you just talked about, a huge, huge, multiple, multiple conflicts.

And he becomes the Paul Revere of the War of 1812.

I didn't know that part of him.

Nobody does.

Yes, there's a little bit of debate whether he made it to West Virginia or not.

I kind of like to think that he did.

No, there weren't borders.

And they touch up.

And I did drive through West Virginia at one point in the book, so it helps me if I think that he did.