[1] It may date back to the American colony of New Sweden, when in 1637 Peter Gunnarsson Rambo, a Swedish immigrant, arrived on the Kalmar Nyckel.

There is no certainty, however, since the earliest documented mention of the apple variety's origin occurs in William Coxe's A View of the Cultivation of Fruit Trees, and the Management of Orchards and Cider, published in 1817.

In 1847, the Rambo was included among the 18 varieties of apple trees that Henderson Luelling of Salem, Iowa brought with his family along the Oregon Trail to establish the first orchard in the Pacific Northwest.

According to author David Morrell, the apple provided the name for the hero of his novel, First Blood, which gave rise to the Rambo film franchise.

James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier Poet, sentimentalized the Rambo in his poem, The Rambo-Tree which appeared in his 1902 collection The Book of Joyous Children.

[7] The poem includes the repeating chorus: For just two truant lads like we, When Autumn shakes the rambo-tree There's enough for you and enough for me It's a long, sweet way across the orchard.

A similar sentiment was expressed by "Uncle Silas" in his column for the September 1907 issue of The American Thresherman: "What has become of the good old apples we used to eat in the long ago down on the farm?

As Michael Pollan indicates in his chapter on the apple in Botany of Desire, John Chapman (1774–1845), for religious reasons related to the doctrines of Emanuel Swedenborg, believed grafting was an unnatural practice.

Back when the frontier only extended as far west as the state of Indiana, that worked fine for Johnny Appleseed, since the apples from his trees were used principally for making hard cider.