Walking Purchase
Wrightstown Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Starting here at sunrise, Sept. 19, 1737, Marshall, Yeates, and Jennings set out on the "Indian Walk." In one and a half days, Edward Marshall reached a point beyond present Mauch Chunk, some 65 miles to the north and west.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
At sunrise on September 19, 1737, three chosen walkers—Marshall, Yeates, and Jennings—set out from this spot to measure the land Pennsylvania claimed under the Walking Purchase. Over a day and a half, Edward Marshall pressed on past present-day Jim Thorpe, covering some 65 miles far to the north and west. The punishing pace stretched the purchase well beyond what the Lenape believed they had agreed to.
Why it matters
This starting point marks one of colonial America's most infamous land grabs, a walk engineered to defraud the Lenape of their homeland.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the 1730s, Pennsylvania was no longer the raw frontier of William Penn's first landing. Philadelphia had grown into one of the busiest ports in British North America, and a rising tide of settlers—many of them German and Scots-Irish—was pushing north and west out of the older river counties in search of farmland. Every mile of that hunger pressed against the homelands of the Lenape, the Delaware people who had lived along these creeks and river bottoms for generations.
William Penn himself had built his colony's early reputation on fair dealing with Native nations. But Penn died in debt, and by 1737 the colony was run by his sons and their agents, men far more interested in the value of land than in their father's reputation for honesty. The stretch of Bucks County where this marker stands sat right at the seam between settled country and Lenape territory.
This was the world into which three men walked at sunrise on an September morning: a colony eager to convert wilderness into deeds, and a Native people about to learn how a friendly-sounding agreement could be turned into a weapon.
People & events
The device was simple and, on its face, almost quaint. The land Pennsylvania claimed would be measured by how far a man could walk in a day and a half. Everyone pictured an ordinary stroll through the woods. What the Lenape got instead was a carefully staged athletic event.
The colony hired its fastest men and prepared the ground in advance—clearing and marking a route so the walkers could move without obstruction. From this starting point, three walkers set out at first light: Edward Marshall, along with the men remembered as Yeates and Jennings. They did not amble. They ran and strode at a punishing pace, with horses and supplies to keep them going.
One by one the others fell away, but Edward Marshall pressed on. By the end of the day and a half he had covered a distance far greater than anyone on the Lenape side had imagined possible—well past the mountains, many dozens of miles to the north and west. The line he traced became the boundary of an enormous tract, stretched to its absolute limit by the speed of a single determined man.
Its place in the American story
The Walking Purchase has come down through American history as one of the clearest early examples of how the letter of an agreement could be used to betray its spirit. It is remembered not as an honest survey but as a land grab dressed up in the language of a treaty.
The consequences reached far beyond these Bucks County woods. The vast territory taken helped push the Lenape from their homeland, feeding resentments that would echo through the frontier conflicts of the following decades. It also marked a turning point in how the Penn colony—once famous for its fairness—came to be seen by the Native nations it dealt with.
Standing at the starting line of that walk, you are looking at the origin point of a story repeated again and again across the continent: Indigenous land measured, bounded, and claimed on terms the original inhabitants never truly agreed to. That this particular version turned on a footrace only makes the injustice more vivid.
If you visit
There is no grand monument here—just a roadside marker in the gentle, rolling farm country of Wrightstown Township. That plainness is part of the point. This is where a day and a half of walking began, and the landscape still gives you a sense of the ground those men set out to cross.
Stand for a moment and imagine sunrise on that September morning: the walkers at the ready, colonial officials watching, and the enormous stakes hidden inside such an ordinary-seeming act. From here the route ran north and west into steadily wilder, hillier country, and knowing that gives the quiet fields around you a charge they wouldn't otherwise have.
If you're building a road trip around this, treat this marker as chapter one and let the geography tell the rest. Following the general direction of the walk—north toward the mountains—turns a simple drive into a way of feeling, mile by mile, just how far that infamous walk was stretched.
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 of 1737
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
William Penn's First Walking Purchase
Upper Makefield Township, PA · est. 2001
In the summer of 1682, only months after receiving his charter, William Penn began acquiring land from the region's Lenape inhabitants under a distinctive measure: the distance a man could cover on foot in a day and a half, walked out from the mouth of Neshaminy Creek. This spot along Towissinck (Jerricho) Creek marked the northern edge of that first purchase, which took in the ground that became Bristol, Falls, Middletown, Newtown, and the Makefield townships. Tradition holds that Penn made the walk himself, at an unhurried pace that reflected his early intent to deal fairly.
Playwicky Indian Town, 1682 - PLAQUE
Lower Southampton Township, PA · est. 1925
In the earliest years of Penn's colony, an Unami Lenape community known as Playwicky stood in the vale by the run and springs south of here. Their leader was Tammany, a chief of the Turtle clan who became famous for his dealings with William Penn and, later, as a folk symbol of American liberty. In 1683 he and his people sold Penn the land between the Neshaminy and Pennypack Creeks.
Katharine Drexel (1858-1955)
Bensalem Township, PA · est. 2004
Born to a wealthy Philadelphia banking family, Katharine Drexel turned her inheritance toward the people her era most neglected. After professing her vows in 1891 she founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and spent more than four decades building mission schools and churches for Native and African American communities, including Holy Providence School near this spot. In 2000 the Catholic Church recognized her as a saint.
Pennypack Creek Bridge
Philadelphia, PA · est. 2012
Built about 1697 where a Lenape trail forded Pennypack Creek, this modest triple-arched stone span is reckoned the oldest roadway bridge in continuous use in the United States. It carried the King's Highway, one of colonial America's great overland routes, and in 1781 bore the tramp of American and French troops marching south with Rochambeau toward the decisive siege of Yorktown. Widened only once, in 1893, its upstream face looks much as it did when William Penn's colony was young.