Hans Sprungfeld, better known as Jebediah Obadiah Zachariah Jedediah Springfield, was the purported historical founder of the town of Springfield and a murderous pirate.

Biography[]

Hans Sprungfeld was born around the year 1774 to poor farmers in Axhandle, Virginia, where he learned various skills from his parents. Sprungfeld left his home and joined a merchant ship, where he became a pirate.

Sprungfeld was most famous for attacking George Washington with an ax during an attempt to kill him in 1781 while he was stationed in Trenton, New Jersey. Washington handily fought Hans back, and, bested, Sprungfeld escaped back to sea. To hide his identity, Hans changed his name to Jebediah Springfield in 1796 and formed a town.

According to folklore, Jebediah Springfield led a band of wagons and headed westward with his partner Shelbyville Manhattan. They later parted over political differences; Manhattan wanted to found a town where people could marry their own cousins, while Springfield wanted a town devoted to chastity, abstinence, and a flavorless mush he called "root-marm". Manhattan went on to find the rival town of Shelbyville.^[1]

Despite Springfield's hero status in modern-day Springfield many of his famed deeds have come into question under historical examination. On an expedition to Springfield's historic "Fort Springfield", Bart uncovered inconsistencies in the Jebediah Wacking Day legend, pointing out that he was participating at the Battle of Ticonderoga the day he supposed started whacking snakes.

The Controversial Truth[]

Lisa later proved that "Jebediah Springfield" was in fact a bloodthirsty pirate and enemy of George Washington named Hans Sprungfeld, who had changed his name in 1796 to hide his identity. He wrote his confession on a scrap of paper that formed the "missing piece" of the famously incomplete portrait of George Washington, which he procured when he stepped on the original painting while it was still wet.^[2] However, upon seeing the town pride Springfield has for their founder and history, Lisa decided to keep the discovery to herself.

A distinguishing characteristic of Sprungfeld was his prosthetic silver tongue, which was built to replace his real tongue which was bitten off by a Turkish pirate during a grog house fight. According to The Simpsons Guide to Springfield rumors state that the silver tongue is currently in the possession of Mayor Quimby, who uses it as a paperweight.

Death[]

Killed in a bear attack, syphilis, diphtheria or succumbing to a raging fever after being bitten by a rapid beaver have all been put forward as the cause of death for Jebediah Springfield as well him just disappearing (perhaps deliberately).

The bear in the statue has x's over the eyes which is used in cartoons as an indication a person or animal is dead. The Simpsons used x's over eyes in earlier episodes, but later was dropped although the statue having x's over the dead bear's eyes still remains including the newer HD version of the opening sequence.

The legend of Jedediah Springfield killing a bear with only his bare hands still remains extremely well-known among the local citizenry with many mentions including Bart ("But guys, come on. Don't you remember history class? Jebediah once killed a bear with his bare hands."), Marge ("We've all got to be brave just like Jebediah when he killed that bear."), the bullies Jimbo, Dolph, and Kearney ("Throwin' rocks is one thing. But I would never cut the head off of a guy who iced a bear with his bare hands.") and the dramatization of the event on TV ("Along the way, he met a ferocious bear and killed him with his bare hands. That's b-a-r-e hands."), but it was only then it was explained in over-voice, "Modern historians recently uncovered evidence that the bear, in fact, probably killed him."

Merchandise which were released prior to the airing of the episode "Lisa the Iconoclast" went into more detail. In "Simpsons Illustrated Volume 2" released in 1991 had pages from Bart's school textbook Hewn from Courage: The History of Springfield and specifically Chapter III: The Legend of Jebediah Springfield.

From Jebediah Springfield's SkyBox Simpsons Trading Cards released in 1994.

Most likely "that young Lumpkin woman" is an ancestor of the attractive country singer Lurleen Lumpkin.

In "Lisa the Iconoclast", which were partially inspired by the 1991 exhumation of Zachary Taylor, 12^th President of the United States, Lisa has gone to research her school essay on Jebediah Springfield at the Springfield Historical Society where she discovered a long-lost "Secret Confessions of Jebediah Springfield" hidden inside his fife.

Lisa convinces the Town Jubilation Committee to dig up Jebediah Springfield's grave in the local cemetery so the secret confession can be verified. The coffin is pried open by historical society's curator Hollis Hurlbut with his intact skeleton wearing his buckskin suit and coonskin cap. The silver tongue of murderous pirate Hans Sprungfeld is indeed hanging of the skull, but Hurlburt pockets the silver tongue is the dust cloud before anyone else can see it. Why at the original burial nobody made note of his silver tongue is never brought up nor does anybody think to examine the exhumed skeleton to resolve if he really did die from a bear attack.

For the episode "I'm Just a Girl Who Can't Say D'oh" Marge has been put in charge of the local theatre production and Lisa suggests a "node"/self-confessed rip-off of the musical Hamilton on the life of Jebediah Springfield titled Bloody, Bloody Jebediah (a reference to the musical Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson). Lisa is reading up to write the musical including the show's Wikipedia-spoof Wiccapedia making note Jebediah Springfield died from a beaver bite. The lyrics for the finale are: "And now I have a raging fever. Bitten by a rabid beaver. I didn't fight for equal rights. I wish I'd done more for non-Whites. But no more time for Jebediah. All that's left to do... Is Die-a." One of the other songs, "This Bear," seems to give credence that the legendary barehanded killing of the bear was real. The no-dialogue. totally covered by full costume role of the bear was played by actor John Lithgow who explains he just wants to work.

In the Simpsons Comics "Wall or Nothing" the town meeting has gotten heated over a water rights dispute when Lisa enters to give her slide-show presentation to point out Springfield is officially two towns, Upper Springfield and Lower Springfield (a not unsimilar plotline to the episode "A Tale of Two Springfields").

Fame today[]

Springfield had many famous quotations, such as "A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man", and was well known for his figurative and literal silver tongue. He also wears a coonskin cap.

Hollis Hurlbut, the curator at the Springfield Historical Society, is devoted to the study of the town's history, specially Jebediah's, although even he admits some historians consider Jebediah Springfield a minor patriot. Hurlbut, the first to see the silver tongue confirming Jebediah Springfield's true background, at first kept the truth hidden until Lisa confronted him into confessing and he has a change of heart now wanting to get the truth to everyone in Springfield which Lisa was about to do until she decides at he last moment the myth of Jebediah Springfield has importance too.

Dedications[]

Footage of Springfield from 1906 has the statue in it so it has been in the town square since at least 1906.^[3]

The Springfield Marathon commemorates an occasion on which he ran across six states in order to avoid his creditors.

The Springfield's monument also contains the corpse of Jebediah's bear.

Statue head[]

The statue was once beheaded with a hacksaw by Bart, who thought that it would make him more popular. In reality, the town became depressed and angry, leaving Bart to endure "The Tell-Tale Heart"-style guilt before he returned the head to its rightful place.^[4] It appears that while the head is back in its rightful place it has never been properly re-attached, as it frequently falls off.

The "Real" Statue[]

Campus tours at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon have noted the "real Jebediah Springfield statue" as "The Pioneer" (the statue is meant to represent all early settlers rather than a specific person) although the statue was later removed.^[5] Another cited as the "real" statue is the statue of Marcus Whitman which used to be in the U.S. Capitol rotunda representing the state of Washington. Legends about how Marcus Whitman "saved the Oregon Territory" have been contested and debunked for years yet those legends persist.

The fabled 19^th-century frontiersman Davy Crockett had a major resurgence in popularity during the mid-1950s including the fashion trend for young boys of the coonskin caps like the one Jebediah wears. Davy Crockett, like others, did wear fur headgear made from racoons and other small wild animals except the caps looked different such as having the creature's face at the front. "The Ballad of Davy Crokett" has the lyric, "killed a bear when he was only 3" and while tales of bear-hunting were a part of Davy Crockettt's political campaigns no evidence exists he did kill a bear at age 3 and he did not claim to have done so. The image of Jebediah Springfield whacking a snake with a rifle may have come from depictions of Davy Crockett using his Kentucky Long Rifle as a club during the Battle of the Alamo. Davy Crockett has many statues across the United States, but some fans have put forward the Davy Crockett statue in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee as the "real Jebediah Springfield statue."^[6]

Appearances[]

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Notes[]

• Jebediah Springfield is a premium character in The Simpsons: Tapped Out. In the game, several of Jebediah's lines and one of his tasks (repent for many sins) indicates he separately had some remorse about his past.
• In Bart vs. The Space Mutants, Bart after using a firecracker to scare a bird away from the statue has a voice congratulate Bart before giving him advice on "getting ahead" (alluding to warping). The voice presumably belonged to Jebediah Springfield.

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