Walking Purchase
Tinicum Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Solomon Jennings, one of the three walkers, fell out of the race near here, having covered about 19 miles from Wrightstown. He followed the others to a point near his home on the Lehigh River.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
Even the small human details of the Walking Purchase underscore how deliberately the colony pushed its walkers to strip the Lenape of the maximum possible territory.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1730s, the lands along the creeks and rivers of Bucks County marked a moving frontier. Behind it lay the farms, mills, and market towns of a fast-growing Pennsylvania; ahead of it lay the homelands of the Lenape, the Delaware people whose villages and hunting grounds followed the waterways north toward the Lehigh.
Pennsylvania had begun under William Penn with a reputation for dealing squarely with Native nations. But by this decade the colony was in the hands of Penn's heirs and their agents, who saw in that same land not a partnership to be honored but acreage to be claimed. The pressure of incoming settlers made every boundary a matter of money.
The countryside around Tinicum Township, with the Lehigh River not far off, sat squarely in this contested zone. It was the kind of ground where a single day's events could decide who would hold thousands of acres for generations.
People & events
The Walking Purchase of 1737 was supposed to measure land by an honest day-and-a-half's walk. Instead the colony turned it into a grueling endurance contest, hiring its fastest men and preparing the route ahead of time so they could cover as much ground as humanly possible.
Solomon Jennings was one of the three chosen walkers. He set out with the others and matched the brutal pace for a time, but the effort was more than any ordinary walk could ask. After roughly nineteen miles from the start at Wrightstown, his strength gave out and he dropped from the race. From there he made his way toward his own home on the Lehigh River, following the others' general course but no longer part of the walk.
His exhaustion is a small, human detail in a large injustice—and a telling one. If a strong man hired for the task could be broken partway through, it shows just how far beyond a genuine walk the whole exercise had been pushed. Jennings fell out; the walk did not slow down.
Its place in the American story
The Walking Purchase endures in American memory as a case study in how a legal-sounding agreement could be bent to defraud a Native nation. What made it infamous was precisely this gap between the friendly picture of a man walking through the woods and the reality of a staged, all-out run designed to seize the maximum possible territory.
Jennings's collapse puts that reality into flesh and bone. The colony was not measuring in good faith; it was extracting every mile it could, at a cost that wore out even the men it paid. The land taken helped drive the Lenape from their homes and sowed bitterness that would shape the frontier for years afterward.
This marker matters because it reminds us that history's large betrayals are made of small, concrete moments—one walker giving out by the roadside while the machinery of a land grab rolled on without him.
If you visit
This is quiet country, and the marker sits modestly in it, near where one of the Walking Purchase's three men could go no farther. The Lehigh River—where Jennings was headed once he dropped out—is part of the landscape's story here, tying the human detail to the ground you're standing on.
Pause and think about distance in your body rather than on a map. Nineteen-odd miles at a near run, over rough country, is a hard thing; picturing it here makes the ordeal real in a way a plaque alone can't. The land doesn't look dramatic, but it carries the memory of an exhausting day.
For a road trip, this pairs naturally with the walk's starting point to the south. Driving between them lets you trace, in reverse, the very stretch Jennings managed before he faltered—turning a short leg of your journey into a way of measuring just how demanding that first stretch of the walk really was.
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
- · Solomon Jennings
Related events
- · Walking Purchase of 1737
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Gallows Hill - PLAQUE
Springfield Township, PA · est. 1925
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.
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