USA > Pennsylvania > Bucks County > History of Bucks county, Pennsylvania, from the discovery of the Delaware to the present time, Vol. I > Part 63
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
where there were many Delaware Indians, among whom was one known as Captain Harrison, a noted man among them, but he did not remember that he or any other Indians complained of any unfairness in the matter, that the men walked, but did not run, and the walk was begun at a place near Wrights- town." There is a discrepancy among the witnesses in regard to eating on the road, some of them saying that the victuals were served to the men while they walked, others that they halted at noon for dinner, and of course breakfasted before starting in the morning, and ate supper after they stopped in the even- ing. After the walk was made surveyors were sent to mark out the tract in- cluded in the purchase, which enabled the authorities to fill up the lines left blank in the treaty.6
The traditional and other testimony of the Chapman family of Wrights- town should be sufficient to fix the starting point at the chestnut tree without question. Edward Chapman, who died about 1853 at the age of ninety-one, said the chestnut tree stood in the field lately owned by Martha Chapman at the southwest corner where the Pennsville road comes into the Durham road and then belonged to John Chapman, the surveyor. Edward went to school in a house that stood near by, and said he had swung upon the branches after it was blown or ent down. The author was told by John Knowles, sexton of the Wrightstown meeting, and a resident of the neighborhood for over forty years, that Edward Chapman pointed out to him the stump of the chestnut tree in the corner of what is now Martha Chapman's field. Abraham Chapman, the brother of John, the surveyor, lived on the Durham road near where the chestnut tree stood, was married 1715 and had a family of six sons and two daughters, John, the eldest, born in 1716, and Joseph, the youngest, 1733, all born prior to the Great Walk. Several were old enough, and, no doubt were present at the starting, and had a distinct recollection of it. Some of them, father and sons, held positions of trust-members of Assembly, justices of the peace, and one Trustee of the loan-office, and all men of undoubted integ- rity and veracity. Many of their children lived to an advanced age, and died in the memory of persons recently living, and the children of others deccase : conversed with them on the subject, and they all unhesitatingly declared the starting point was the chestnut tree that stood on the corner where the roa ! from Pennsville joins the Durham road. They must have often heard their father and uncles speal: of the matter, and, being born and brought up on the
5 In the carly history of the county, the townstead in this township was known by the name of Wrightstown. and no doubt surveyor-general Eastburn makes this reference when he says the walk "began at a place near Wrightstown."
6 The controversy, as to the point of beginning the Indian "Walking Purchase." . ! 1737, has not entirely subsided, despite the conclusive testimony in our text. Mr. Buck says it didl actually begin a few yards above Wrightstown meeting house, instead of hel : it at the Newtown township live, as given on Benjamin Eastburn's map of the walk. Among those who believed the walk began at the chestnut tree, a part of which is it" standing on the farm now belonging to Joshuu Tomlinson. just south of the Wrightstown meeting house, was ile late Dr. Phineas Jenks, Newtown. Hle was born in 17St, du . .. the life of some who had taken part in the walk, and heard it much talked about in 3. youth. In a recent letter from Geo. A. Jenks, son of Dr. Phineas, and written to ' . author, he states his father had often pointed out to him the tree below the meeting hr" and sail that Yates, Jennings and Marshall started from it on the walk. We give ::. - evidence because the witness is credible; but do not think the testimony strong enn'ai to ciinsay that in the texr.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
spot, their opportunity of obtaining correct information could scarce be equalled. Some of them fixed the spot more particularly as a little west of the northwest corner of the graveyard.
The Bucks County Historical Society, 1886, erected a fitting monument to mark the starting point in the Walking Purchase. Action was first taken at the Quarterly meeting, held at Wrightstown, July 31, 1883, at which a com- mittee was appointed to carry out its views. It was composed of John Cooper, Mrs. Cynthia A. Holcomb, Eleazer F. Church, Miss Annie Scarboro, Thomas C. Knowles, and George C. Blackfan, who were instructed "to wait upon the present owner of the land where the old chestnut tree stood, at which the Walking Purchase, 1737, was begun, and get permission to place a stone or mark of some other character, upon the spot; to furnish some plan for the mark, or other device and to report etc., etc. No further action was had until January 19, 1886, when the committee reported, recommending a pyramidal monument of fine hard sandstone or granite, the shaft about four feet high, resting on a base of symmetrical size placed on a sodded mound two feet high. It was erected that season at a cost of one hundred and one dollars, and, on three sides is the following legend :
TO THE MEMORY OF THE LENNI LENAPE INDIANS ANCIENT OWNERS OF THIS REGION
THESE STONES ARE PLACED AT THIS SPOT THE STARTING POINT OF THE "INDIAN WALK" September 19, 1737
BUCKS Co. HIST. So. 1890
Martha Chapman gave the land, six hundred and twenty square feet. she deeding it to Edward Atkinson and wife, and they to the Bucks County His- torical Society. It stands about on the site of the chestnut tree, near the Wrightstown meeting property.
In this connection it is of interest to locate the corner marked spruce tree by the Delaware, from which the northern boundary of the purchase of 1682 was run. This tree was standing. 1756, and, according to measurements of John Watson, the surveyor, it was one hundred and forty perches, measured by the bank of the river "above the mouth of the Great creek, so called," and now known as Knowles' creek. . In 1722 Samuel Baker,? owned a tract of five
7 Under date of May 11, I&A. Richard Randolph Parry, New Hope, wrote the author as follows : "I find among my papers an old deed, unrecorded, from Joseph Knowles and Catharine Knowles, his wife. to John Knowles, dated July 4, A. D., 1759, for a tract of land in Makefield township. Bucks county, Pennsylvania, which deed describes it as a
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
hundred and fifty-two acres in Upper Makefield, on both sides of this creek, and extending ninety and five-tenths perches above it, which is good reason why the creek was then called Baker's creek. It is the only creek in that section of the county which has high hills along its northern bank, which is not the case with Hough's creek, which some claim was Baker's. The white oak, mentioned in this grant, Watson supposed to stand, at the time he measured the distance of the spruce tree from the mouth of the creek, near the northeast corner of Joseph Hampton's land, on a branch of the aforesaid Great creek, and that Playwicky, an Indian town or plantation, was about Philip Draket's mill, below Heaton's mill. Towsisnick creek, near the head of which the town of Playwicky was situated, is supposed to have been the southerly branch of Knowles' creck, which then headed on Hampton's farm. The line, from the white oak across part of Upper Makefield and Wrightstown. was marked by a line of blazed trees. John Penquite, who deceased about 1756. remembered, when a lad. to have seen the marked trees across his father's farm, and to have heard the Indians tell his father that it was the line between them and Penn, and they ordered him to till the ground on Penn's side only, and not to meddle with theirs. This line ran west, southwest to Neshaminy.
Of the three white men who started upon the Great Walk of 1737, Mar- shall is the better known. Jennings who gave out first, lived on what was long known as the Geisinger farm on the south bank of the Lehigh, two miles above Bethlehem. When he settled there it was the extreme frontier of the county in that direction, and the house he lived in was one of two in that neighborhood when the Moravians came. His son John was sheriff of Northampton county. in 1762, and again in 1768. and a good officer. Solomon Jennings was a com- missioner of the county. 1755, and was often on road-views. In 1756 he passed through Nazareth at the head of a company of militia en route for the . scene of the Indian massacre on the frontiers, to search for and bury the dead. Beside a son John, he had a son, Isaiah, and daughters Judith and Rachel, and one married Nicholas Scull. He died February 15, 1757, and was buried in the family graveyard on the farm. After the death of his widow, 176.4, !!. e two hundred acres were sold at public stle to Jacob Geisinger, of Saucon township, the ancestor of the late owner, and also one hundred and sixty-four acres adjoining. James Yeates lived in New town, but probably died before he reached home. He came from New England.
Edward Marshall was a native of Bustleton, Philadelphia county, where he was born I710, which makes him twenty-seven years old when he per-
part of the "Knowles tract" of 540 acres more or less, in Upper Makefeld, owned, 17-2. by Samuel Baker, who, it recites, conveyed in the month of December, 1725, to Je Knowles, the elder, of Upper Makencid township. In General Davis's History of Backs County. Pennsylvania, page 495. it is noted as being upon both sides of "Knowles (run." and contents given 552 ceres, owned by Samuel Baker, in A. D. 1722. (This land s.c. ) to have gained 12 actes over the Jand office survey. ) This doubtless covers the histor "Knowles Core," from where the boat- were taken for "Washington's Crossing." The del unsht to be recorded. as it forms a valuable link in a chain of historic events. The ! . ' Was not acknowledged. being a imnily affair, unid 224 of June. 1752, when it was d "t In fore John Harris, Esq. J. P. who took Catharme Knowles acknowledgment in pers . and that of Joseph Knowles, presumably deceased, by the affidavit of John Beaumont. i. ' he saw Joseph Knowles sign it, and also John Watson. Jr .. one of the attesting witnesses. affix his signature to the deed-Watson also probably being deceased."
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
formed the Great Walk. He was a hunter by occupation and choice. He was twice married and the father of twenty-one children. It is not known at what time he came into the county, but we first find him living with his wife near where Stroudsburg, Monroe county, stands.' In his absence from home hostile Indians came to his house, when his wife fled, but was overtaken and killed with two unborn infants. From this time Marshall swore vengeance against the Indians, and never lost an opportunity of killing one. He would, at times, simply remark, when questioned about his Indian experience, that when he saw one "he generally shut one eye, and never saw him afterward." After the death of his wife, Elizabeth Meaze kept house for him, and, during that time, the Indians attacked it again while he was away from home. His son, Peter, loaded the gun and Elizabeth fired out the window, keeping the Indians at bay until Marshall returned. He afterward married her, and she had eight children. He was probably a single man at the time of the walk, and did not move up to Monroe county until afterward. The Indians were hostile to him because of the part he took in the Great Walk. He subsequently removed to an island in the Delaware, opposite Tinieum, which bears his name, and where he died. His body was brought to the Pennsylvania side and buried from a house that stood on the site of one now standing just below the mouth of Tinicum creek. His place of interment in the Marshall burying- ground, is marked by a stone, with the following inscription :
"In memory of Edward Marshall, senior, who departed this life November 7, 1789, aged seventy-nine years.
"Unveil thy be som faithful tomb, . Take this frail treasure to thy trust, And find these sacred relics room, To slumber in the silent dust."
Another stone is "in memory of Elizabeth Marshall, who departed this life October 12. 1867, aged eighty years," his second wife. Of his children William died at the age of eighty, at the mouth of Tinicum creek, Catharine was the maternal grandmother of many of the Ridges of Tinicum, and Mar- shall's island, which contained two hundred and fifty acres when Edward Marshall lived on it, was given to his sons, Martin and William. Mloses died about the last of June, 1828, on Marshall's island. He said that his father did not move to the backwoods until after the Indian war of 1756, and that he escaped when his mother was massacred by hiding under a bench on which were several bec-hives, and upon which the Indians threw their match-coats while they went to scalp his mother. He used to relate several incidents of the walk. His father wore very thin and flexible moccasins, and carried a hatchet, and a few light biscuits. None of the streams on the route were to be crossed in boats except the Lehigh, but were to be forded. neither were the walkers permitted to run and jump over a creek, but might go first to the edge and make an observation, and then return and jump it. The walkers did not leave the Durham road until they reached the furnace, when they followed blazed trees through the woods. The riffe that Edward Marshall carried was owned by his grandson. William Ridge. Tincum, who lived on the Delaware a short distance below the month of Tinicum creek, and is now in the museum of the Bucks County Historical Society. It is a flint lock, in good condition, and the name of the German maker, or the place where made, stamped on the barrel.
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HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
The family tradition is that Marshall killed one thousand and three hundred deer with it, besides other animals, and unnumbered Indians. Eliza Kean, his grand- daughter, and a daughter of his son Thomas, eighty-two years old, in 1876, was then living on the New Jersey side of the Delaware, just below Frenchtown, owned his eight-day clock, in good running order, and his chest of drawers, three hundred years old, which his grandfather brought from England. Philip Hinkle has a shot-gun that belonged to Edward Marshall.
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