Harpsichord The harpsichord was the most popular of the early keyboard instruments. The strings were made of metal and plucked with quills. The metallic sound was not pleasing to musicians ears, but Mozart figured out a way to make music sound more b...
Papa Leopold Mozart was very strict. He was a composer and violinist in Salzburg in Austria. When he was finished working for the day, Leopold came home and gave his daughter and son music lessons. Over and over they played what he taught them. They...
More than 200 years ago, there was a little boy who learned to play a musical instrument at the age of three. It was called a clavier, which was an old-fashioned stringed instrument that also had a keyboard. By the time he was five, he was composing...
Twenty-six years after Johnny died, an author wrote an article about him in Harpers New Monthly Magazine. It was called Johnny AppleseedA Pioneer Hero. Readers all over America enjoyed reading about Johnnys unusual life. Imagine a barefoot man roamin...
After the war ended, Johnny began buying more land. Some of his orchards were less than an acre in size. Others covered hundreds of acres. He took care of his orchards all by himself for most of his life. Sometimes he needed help for certain jobs. Wh...
In the early 1800s, shiploads of new immigrants arrived on Americas East Coast every week. They came from Germany, Ireland, Scandinavia, and other areas. Thousands of them moved west, taking over Native American hunting grounds. The pioneers chopped...
A good apple is a nickname for someone who is a good person. Johnny Appleseed was a good apple. Sometimes he helped settlers build cabins or chop trees. He knew they were struggling to make new lives for themselves in the west. If people couldnt pay,...
The first newspaper in the Northwest Territory was published in 1793 in Cincinnati, Ohio. But frontier settlers rarely got a chance to see a newspaper or any book besides the Bible. Most cabins were built far apart, and settlers didnt get many visito...
In 1800, the census counted 5.3 million people in the United States. Pennsylvania was getting too crowded to suit Johnny. When he was twenty-six, he led a horse across the Pennsylvania border into Ohio. It was carrying a load of apple seeds. He plant...
Johnnys orchards kept him busy year-round. Every fall, Pennsylvania farmers took their newly picked apples to the cider mills. So thats when seeds were plentiful. Johnny usually collected a couple of bushels of them from the mills. During the winter,...