Gallows Hill - PLAQUE
Springfield Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Here Edward Marshall and his associates of the famous Indian Walk of a day and a half September 19-20, 1737 left the Old Durham Road on the first day and followed the well-beaten Indian path which led northwesterly through present Hellertown, Bethlehem, Northampton and the Lehigh Gap
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
This spot marks a stage of the notorious "Walking Purchase" of 1737, when Pennsylvania's proprietors held the Lenape to a land deal measured by how far a man could walk in a day and a half. Rather than an honest stroll, Edward Marshall and his companions were trained runners who followed cleared paths at a punishing pace, seizing far more territory than the Delaware had expected to give. From the Old Durham Road they pressed northwest through the country that became Bethlehem and the Lehigh Gap.
Why it matters
The Walking Purchase became a byword for colonial dispossession, poisoning Lenape relations with Pennsylvania and pushing the nation toward alliance with the French.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1730s, the Lenape — the Delaware people — still held broad country across eastern Pennsylvania, including the rolling land of what is now Bucks County, where this marker stands. But the ground beneath them was shifting, as the colony's proprietors pressed to open more and more territory to settlement.
Land in this era was acquired through deeds and agreements whose terms could be stretched, reinterpreted, and exploited. A vague phrase in an old document could become, in the proprietors' hands, a lever to claim far more than the Native signers had ever understood themselves to be giving.
That is the backdrop to the events of September 1737 on this spot. What looks on the map like a simple walk through the Pennsylvania countryside was in fact the mechanism of an enormous land transfer — one measured not in surveyed boundaries but in how far men could travel in a day and a half.
People & events
The marker records a specific stage of the famous "Indian Walk" of a day and a half, on September 19–20, 1737. Here Edward Marshall and his associates left the Old Durham Road on the first day and followed a well-beaten Indian path leading northwest — through the country that became Hellertown, Bethlehem, Northampton, and on toward the Lehigh Gap.
The arrangement held the Lenape to a deed that measured land by a walk. The expectation, reasonably enough, was of a walk — a day and a half of ordinary travel on foot. What actually happened was something else: Marshall and his companions were chosen for speed and endurance, and they went at a punishing pace along paths cleared to let them cover the greatest possible distance.
The result was a seizure of far more territory than the Delaware had expected to part with. The route traced on this marker is the very line of that fast march northwest, the physical path by which an enormous tract passed out of Lenape hands.
Its place in the American story
The Walking Purchase became a byword for colonial dispossession — a case where the letter of an agreement was twisted to defeat its plain and honest meaning. It is remembered not because a walk was unusual, but because of how cynically the method was exploited.
The consequences outlasted the two-day march. The sense of betrayal poisoned relations between the Lenape and Pennsylvania, pushing a nation that had lived alongside the colony toward anger, displacement, and, in the wars that followed, alliance with the colony's French rivals. A single manipulated land deal helped set the stage for years of conflict.
In the broad American story, the Walking Purchase stands as an early, vivid example of a pattern that would repeat across the continent: Native land lost not only through open war but through documents, technicalities, and the selective honoring of promises. The path marked here is a thread in that much larger national reckoning.
If you visit
Stand where the route left the Old Durham Road and look to the northwest, the direction the walkers took. You're looking down the line of the march itself — the same general course that runs toward Hellertown, Bethlehem, and the distant Lehigh Gap.
Think about pace as you stand here. The injustice of this place isn't visible in the landscape; it lives in the difference between a walk and a run, between what was promised and what was taken. Let the ordinary-looking ground remind you how much can ride on a few words in a deed.
If you follow the general northwesterly path on a drive through this part of Pennsylvania, you can trace in modern miles what was covered on foot in a day and a half — a road trip that doubles as a lesson in how borders and ownership were made. It's a quiet marker with a long shadow; give it a moment, and carry the Lenape's side of the story with you down the road.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Edward Marshall
Related events
- · Walking Purchase
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Walking Purchase
Springfield Township, PA · est. 1949
In 1737 Pennsylvania's proprietors invoked a supposed 1686 deed promising land as far as a man could walk in a day and a half. Thomas Penn hired the fastest walkers he could find and had a trail cleared in advance to stretch the distance to its absolute limit. The maneuver seized far more Lenape land than expected and shattered the goodwill his father, William Penn, had cultivated with Native peoples.
Walking Purchase
Tinicum Township, PA · est. 1949
The 1737 Walking Purchase depended on three hired walkers, but the punishing pace took its toll. Near this point Solomon Jennings gave out after roughly 19 miles from the start at Wrightstown, leaving Edward Marshall to carry the walk to its grueling end. Jennings turned toward his home on the Lehigh River.
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Raised in 1741 as Bethlehem's first house of worship, the Gemein Haus stood at the heart of the Moravians' remarkable communal experiment in colonial Pennsylvania. Its rooms sheltered a roll call of Moravian leaders — including the reforming Count Zinzendorf — and hosted the community's celebrated 1749 "Great Wedding." Most strikingly, it housed a school devoted to studying and teaching Indigenous languages, part of the Moravians' unusual missionary engagement with Native peoples of the region.
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