Early Settler / Johnny Appleseed

If you had asked any of the Lakewood city officials at the time of this massive terra cotta sculpture's installation who the figure is, they would have gleefully and proudly informed you that it is none other than Dr. Jared Potter Kirtland: Botanist, Doctor, Naturalist, and Early Settler of Lakewood, OH (back when it was still Rockport, CT). They might regale you with a story or two about Kirtland's nationally acclaimed exotic gardens, or how he lead the early effort to secure clean drinking water for Lakewood and Cleveland.

If you asked the artist, Viktor Schreckengost, he might tell you, "I made him and I know he's Johnny Appleseed all right," just as he told the Plain Dealer in a career retrospective piece from the 80's. Schreckengost made the Early Settler to be Johnny Appleseed, sowing apple trees all throughout America, however the Lakewood city officials decided that Johnny Appleseed was an inappropriate image for children, as this sculpture is affixed to Lakewood High School. They identified the figure as Dr. Kirtland, but Schreckengost never let the truth stay hidden.

Text from inscribed on the wall of the Civic Auditorium, not far from the sculpture reads:

On this site a century ago
Dr. Jared Potter Kirtland
Lakewood’s noted naturalist
through ingenuity and courage
successfully sowed seeds
of agriculture of science –
the glory of the Ohio settler

In this building
Lakewood Civic Auditorium
Let us sow seeds of culture –
of speech – of drama –
of song – that all who enter will
reap a harvest from ideas
which are planted here