Where are the sources?

My great collaborator wrote the following text about a frustration we've been hitting lately while researching Johnny Appleseed. Michael Pollan alludes to a legislation stating that settlers received land so long as he planted 50 apple trees. However, there was no source. We looked back to the first real book written on Johnny Appleseed, Robert Price's Man and Myth, but almost the same language was used without citation. We find it in a few more secondary sources, almost the same...but where is the source.

Amber writes:

Looking for the source text of the oft-quoted notion that planting an orchard and holding it for five years fulfilled the Northwest Territory Ordinance stipulation of improving lands, I called the Johnny Appleseed Museum in Urbana, Ohio. The fact that this museum is in Urbana makes an odd full circle, as Katie and I met and began working together in Urbana, Illinois. And Katie did her thesis project on the historical links between the two cities. Moving into this project, we didn't realize we would land back in an Urbana.

I talked to the director of the museum, Joe Besecker, was just walking out of a class on Johnny Appleseed. I told him I was looking for the original text that stated planting an orchard qualified settlers to hold lands. He said, yes, planting an orchard established permanency. I agreed, but asked again if he had the original document that explicitly stated this. I said I had assumed it was in the Northwest Territory Ordinance, but it is not there, just a term to call for "improvements". When I asked him about where he found the specifics of this language, he said Dr. Price wrote the definitive book on Johnny Appleseed. He went on to day Dr. Price spent 30 summers doing research and it is the only book he wrote. I said I read it, but it did not supply a source. He state that the Dr. Price is the definitive text they use and the class had just been studying the business practices that Johnny had of going ahead of settlers and planting trees to sell them when they arrive to improve the lands.

This was getting circular and I kept asking, in differing terms if he knew the source of that legal understanding of improving the land. After a bit of round and round, he said he did not and it was possible people were re-quoting Dr. Price.

He did say the great great or great great great great grand son of Johnny's father did quite a bit of research that refutes the claim that Johnny's father we denied lands after his military service because of some accounting booboos, aka theft, under his watch. Joe Besecker is kindly sending this to me, so we may know more soon.

Joe invited me to visit the museum, which he assured me has many documents I would enjoy. He openly stated he was somewhat overwhelmed by the inventory of the museum. This is so common in small museums that do not have the resources to properly deal with all their holdings. He was a math professor before being a director and openly states he has no library experience. In his voice was the wee hope I might want to come and do some sorting. Living in my own house, filled with documents of my past, I know exactly how her feels.