Fortunately his old Quaker friends who had fitted him out with his first boat load of apple seeds had not forgotten John Chapman. With outstretched hands they gave him welcome and asked a thousand questions about the far off rivers of the great West, about the chances there for a young man to make his fortune, and about the resources of that wide lying land. One Quaker farmer in anticipation of his return had saved the seeds of all his best apple trees and grape vines. He told John Chapman the story of a new apple that he had discovered.
And when in late October John Chapman started over the hills toward the fort of Pittsburg, a farmer's wagon holding twenty sacks of apple seeds journeyed with him toward the far off Ohio on the banks of whose creeks and rivers he was planning to set out full many an orchard.