Appleseed (The Appleseed Foundation Inc.) is a non-partisan, nonprofit network of 16 public interest justice centers in the United States and Mexico.

Appleseed was founded in 1993 by members of Harvard Law School’s class of 1958 at their 35th reunion. As founding member Richard Medalie reported to his classmates:

Members of our Class voted to establish a Class of 1958 sponsored and funded foundation to help organize, establish, and guide state centers for law in the public interest throughout the country. We have called the entity formed to carry on this program Appleseed because our concept is to plant a seed from which a public service activity involving lawyers, young and old, can grow and develop across the country.

From the outset Appleseed was framed around what was then a singular approach to pro bono law. Its strategy was to address issues that lent themselves to system-wide reform rather than the traditional model of providing legal services to individuals with legal problems. While litigation is one tool used by some of the Appleseed Centers, the organization tends to focus on achieving structural changes through market-based reforms, policy analysis and research, legislation, and rule making. Its board is no longer limited to its founders, and its reach, partners and methods extend beyond the law and lawyers.

John Chapman (September 26, 1774 – September, 26 1845), also known as Johnny Appleseed, was an American pioneer nurseryman who introduced apple trees to large parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. He became an American legend while still alive, largely because of his kind and generous ways, his great leadership in conservation, and the symbolic importance he attributed to apples.

He was also a missionary for The New Church, or Swedenborgian Church, so named because it teaches the theological doctrines contained in the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.

John Chapman was born in Leominster, Massachusetts, the second child (after his sister, Elizabeth) of Nathaniel and Elizabeth Chapman (née Simonds, married February 8, 1770) of Massachusetts. His birthplace is now marked by a granite marker, and the street is called Johnny Appleseed Lane. Nathaniel Chapman fought at Concord as a Minuteman as early as April 19, 1775, and later served in the Continental Army with General George Washington during the American Revolutionary War. Johnny was born around the time that the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought.