With his mush pan on his head, with hand scattering apple seeds upon good earth and other holding Swedenborgian book of prophecy, barefooted strides effortlessly across country doing good to souls and bodies of his fellow humans and to all God's creatures. Harlan Hatcher, Foreword to Appleseed: A Voice in Wilderness most gracious and heart-warming legend to grow up in America, claimed English professor and University of Michigan president Harlan Hatcher in 1945, is that of Appleseed (ix). The cultural exaltation of Appleseed, iconic alter-ego of real-life nurseryman John Chapman, in fact stands as sustained exercise in American hagiography that since nineteenth-century transfigured Chapman man into the St. Francis of frontier (Hatcher x), patron saint of American orchards (Price, 253) and one of America's half dozen favorite folk heroes (Price, Johnny, xii). Chapman (1774-1845) did in fact migrate from his home state of Massachusetts through Pennsylvania and into Ohio and Indiana, establishing apple tree nurseries that benefited later homesteaders; as his chief biographer Robert Price elaborates, Chapman operated in edge of wilderness just ahead of main settlements and, because of mix of his trail-blazing, benevolence and idiosyncrasy, had an inordinate knack for leaving talk spinning behind (Price, 79). As Edward Hoagland notes, however, legend of has been mainly inscribed in children's (170), and narratives promulgated by Walt Disney and generations of American children's book writers, in Michael Pollan's account, invariably substitute a cheap, fake sweetness for real thing (7). Returning to roots of legend through an examination of Appleseed's literary debut in James M'Gaw's little-known 1858 novel Philip Seymour, or Pioneer Life in Richland County, Ohio begins to rectify historical problem of sweetening and attenuation of narrative. Particularly in its fidelity to irreducible strangeness of Appleseed, novel argues for multifarious importance of for adults. Despite plasticity and durability of as an American legend, little if any critical attention in fact been paid to as literary character. Price usefully surveyed literature of and pinpointed several books that have proved crucial in giving story impulse and direction (Price, Johnny 9),1 but neither he nor subsequent historians and literary critics provided any sustained exegesis of those books. Although Price recognizes Philip Seymour as a powerful literary influence on unfolding legend (Johnny 249) and notes innovations that M'Gaw brings to it, he rebukes novel for being merely a thin, highly plot in Scott and Cooper tradition (Johnny 250). In ignoring novel, subsequent literary historians and critics implicitly concur with Price's judgment. M'Gaw himself, according to his publisher Roeliff Brickerhoff, born in Pennsylvania ini 823 and moved with his family to Ohio 10 years later; in 1854 family relocated to Richland county in Ohio, setting for events of Philip Seymour. An Ohio schoolteacher for much of his life, M'Gaw was licensed to preach but never took settled charge (Brinkerhoff xxi). While regarding him as something of romantic (xix), Brinkerhoff praises M'Gaw for his local historic and archaeologic investigations (xix) and for his work in preservation (xx) of many items of Ohio's early history. Philip Seymour may well be work of historical preservationist, but Brinkerhoff, as well as more recent critics, underestimates conscious literariness of M'Gaw and overlooks M'Gaw's innovative use of in novel. …