Steven Rinella

Again, as always with history, somebody else says it might have been a disease.

I can't remember which one.

But I do, I think the overwhelming...

idea is that it was a complication of child because he has a lot of siblings a lot of half siblings his father after the war like so many people that worked in the revolutionary war and this is this is the story of my area which is again this low income part of massachusetts a lot of those soldiers were not paid the money that they were supposed to be paid they were paid in scripts then people from boston came and bought the scripts for pennies on the dollar what's the script

Basically, if you were a revolutionary war, if you were a soldier, the government that was very new wrote you an IOU.

Okay, yeah.

And then you needed seeds.

As you know, you needed seeds for your farm for the coming harvest.

So you just needed anything that would get you seeds.

So a bunch of people from Boston came out, bought all the scripts for very, very cheap.

Oh, no kidding.

gave them enough money to buy seeds so they could survive, and then passed a law in Boston.

You have to make good on the scripts.

And so they became, it's just another way of the wealthy elite basically amassed more wealth and ripped off all of these guys that had fought in the Revolutionary War.

And so Chapman's father is dealing with that kind of stuff.

He falls into debt.

He falls into drinking.

So at a very young age, Chapman and his half-brother Nathaniel, I think, kind of sensing that things are rough around the house, set out, and they go west.

More and more people are moving onto the East Coast.

It's becoming what would feel like, especially to somebody like Chapman, who I think had a little bit of itchy feet and liked to spend people alone.