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Hans Sprungfeld, better known as Jebediah Obadiah Zachariah Jedediah Springfield is the purported historical founder of the town of Springfield.

Jebediah Springfield was born in Axhandle, Virginia, in 1774. His dream was to go west and explore the American frontier. When he was thirteen he left school and started to help his father at the farm, but discovered that he was allergic to soil. He then started to work in a shop that printed fishing almanacs and wrote his own pamphlets. He was hired by a mule skinner named Bucskin Calhoun and learned from him valuable lessons in wilderness survival, navigation and attire.

He later led a band of wagons from Maryland and headed westward with his partner Shelbyville Manhattan on a quest to find "New Sodom", after misinterpreting a passage of the Bible. 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 found the rival town of Shelbyville.

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 Simpson uncovered inconsistencies in the Jebediah legend, discovering he accomplished multiple heroic feats on the same day in different and far apart locations...