USA > Pennsylvania > Bucks County > The history of Bucks County, Pennsylvania : from the discovery of the Delaware to the present time > Part 46
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MACKOCKAMACK.
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PINES &C TONPOPLAR T
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PART OF WEST
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TOCK HOCHANETCUNK. NEW JERSEY.
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THE
BRANCH OF
PART OF
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NE 1257 BY
SCHLANK
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LOOKLONG
WATCHSAK.
PERKASEY
HLAND'S
YES
TRENTON
60 MILES
WRIGHT'S TOWN .
NESHAMMINY C
BRIST OF
FIVE CHESTNUT OAKSAT THE END OF THE DAY AND A HALF WALK ON WHICH ARE CUT THE PROPRIETARIES NAMES AND THE YEAR 1737,
WEST
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A SCALE OF ENGLISH MILLS
IMENACASY CHEEK.
POHOTC UNK.
MUSCANETCUNK.
NEBHAGACOWYCE DE,
PHILADELPHIA
A MAP OF THAT PART OF BUCKS COUNTY.
COUNT
RELEASED BY THE INDIANS TO THE PROPRIETARIES OF PENSILVANA IN SEPTEMBER 1737AS BY A FORMER AGREEMENT MADE WITH THE SAID INDIANS BY THE EXTENT OF A MAN'S WALK IN A DAY AND A HALF AND FROM THENCE BY A RIGHT LINE TO DELAWARE RIVER.
UPPER PART OF BUCKS COUNTY.
FLATKILL.
MOUNTAINS.
RPEGUES,
DEL
DELAWARE
488
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
marked the end of the line. Jennings first gave out, about two miles north of the Tohickon, about ten or eleven o'clock of the first day, and then lagged on behind in the company of the curious. He left them on the Lehigh, and returned to his home above Bethlehem, but never recovered his health. Yeates, who fell in the creek at the foot of the mountain the morning of the second day, was quite blind when taken up, and lived but three days. Marshall lived to the age of ninety, and died in Tinicum. The walk is said to have followed an Indian path that led from the hunting-grounds of the Susquehannas down to the Delaware near Bristol, the same which the Indians followed on their visits to Penn at Pennsbury. The Indians showed their dissatisfaction at the manner in which the walk was conducted, and left the party before it had been concluded. It is said they frequently called upon the walkers not to run. The distance walked, according to the measurement we have, was sixty- one and one-fourth miles. Nicholas Scull says it was fifty-five statute miles, while some estimate the distance as great as eighty-six miles. The following courses and distances were discovered during our investigations, and purported to be those of the walk of 1737, but beyond this we cannot vouch for them :
No. 1-N. 34 degrees W., 13g miles.
" 2-N. 19 66 W., 32
" 3-N. 37 W., 14g To Lehigh river 32} miles. " 4-N. 66 66 W., 3}
“ 5-N. 31 66 W., 82
" 6-N. 35.30 " W., 8 66
$ 7-N. 30 66 W., 9
Total, 614 A day and a half's walk.
When the walkers had reached the furthest point possible to the north-west, from the place of starting at Wrightstown, it remained to run the line to the Delaware. This the Indians expected would be drawn in a direct line to the river at the nearest point, but in- stead it was run at right-angles to the line of the walk, and struck the river at or near the Laxawaxen. These lines embraced all the land within the Forks of Delaware, the celebrated Minisink flats, and in fact all the land worth any thing south of the Blue mountains. This also included territory that belonged to the Minsi Indians which the Delawares had no right to convey. This northern line had not been fixed by the treaty, which left it open for the Penns
489
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
to make their own selection of the course. They are accused of in- tentionally including in the purchase all the good lands south of the Blue mountains. The south-westerly line of the purchase is the line between Bucks and Montgomery counties, or nearly so. It is said in extenuation of the conduct of the Proprietaries that it was the intent of the deed to run the north-westerly line from the point where that from the white oak marked P. strikes the Neshaminy, up the most westerly branch of that stream to its utmost limit, then in a straight line back into the woods as far as a man could go in a day and a half. In the earlier deeds of purchase, where the same or similar words are used to signify the line that was to run back into the country, it was meant to be at right-angles to the general course of the river from New Castle to the bend above Pennsbury, and was so run when these lines came to be surveyed. The general course of the river is from north-east to south-west, hence the south- westerly line of the purchase from the utmost limit of the westerly branch of the Neshaminy must be north-westerly, the direction the line was run by the surveyor-general, Mr. Eastburn. When he came to run the head-line he considered it but just and reasonable that it should be at right-angles to the south-westerly line, and it was so run. The quantity of land embraced in the purchase was about five hundred thousand acres. James Stcel wrote to Letitia Aubrey, in November, 1737, that it required about four days to walk from the upper end of the day-and-a-half's journey, and "that after they crossed the great ridge of mountains they saw very little good or even tolerable land fit for settlement."
This walk gave great dissatisfaction to the Indians, and was the subject of much controversy. It was mainly the occasion of the general Indian council at Easton, in 1756, where the matter was fully discussed. The two main causes of complaint were, first, that the walk should have been made up along the Delaware, and second, that it was not fairly made, that the walkers walked too fast, and too constantly, but should have stopped occasionally to shoot game, smoke, and cat. As to the first cause of complaint the Indians had no case. The deed of purchase says, expressly, that the finish- ing and closing line of the boundary shall be down the Delaware, by its several courses, to the place of beginning at the spruce tree. The exact spot to begin the walk was left optional with the con- tracting parties, but it was intended to be at some point toward the western extremity of the head-line of the purchase of 1682. There
490
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
was nothing to prevent fixing the point of starting where the head- line crosses the Neshaminy, but Wrightstown was probably selected because it was convenient, and on a public highway. Now as to the unfairness of the walk. By the terms of the treaty the purchase was to extend as far back into the woods "as a man can go in one day and a half." The agreement was clear and explicit, and the Proprietaries were only carrying out the treaty. The walk was intended to be just what was provided for, a real, earnest, business affair, and not an idle walk without object. There was nothing in the terms of the treaty that confined the men to walking, who could have gone at a faster gate had they been so disposed, but there is no evidence that they went faster. The conditions of the deed were probably hard for the Indians, and they may have been overreached in the treaty of 1737, but when the Proprietaries came to have the terms of the purchase carried out, they claimed no more than they were entitled to. "As far as a man can go in a day and a half," back into the woods was to be the limit of the purchase. At the time, the Indians made no objection to beginning the walk at Wrightstown, but this as a cause of complaint was an afterthought when they realized the quantity of land embraced in the purchase. The witnesses all testify that the walk was fairly made in eighteen hours, with the necessary intermissions for one night's rest, and meals.
There is serious question whether there ever was any treaty of 1686. After Penn's death a document was found among his papers, in England, which was endorsed "Copy of the last Indian purchase." It was not an attested copy, and the handwriting of the endorsement was not known. The "Report of council" on the subject of the complaints of the Indians, made in 1758, states that the paper found was in the handwriting of Philip Thlehuman, then a noted clerk in the offices of the secretary, and land-office, who died in 1687. The report further states that the endorsement was by Thomas Holme, also that mention was made in an ancient diary of William Mark- ham's, that he and Holme treated with the Delaware Indians for the purchase of the lands in the Forks of Delaware just before the date of the deed in 1686. There was never any attempt to prove the deed by calling the persons who witnessed it ; and the only per- sonal evidence is that of William Biles and Joseph Wood, who declared they remembered a treaty being held, but did not know that a deed had been executed. The place where the treaty was made
491
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
is not mentioned anywhere. At the treaty at Easton, in November, 1756, Teedyuscung, chief of the Delawares, denounced the deed of 1686 a forgery, and said that the land at the Forks had been taken from him by fraud.
In all the negotiations touching the deed of 1686, and its affirma- tion, no mention is made of the deed of 1718 executed at Philadel- phia. The chiefs of the Delaware Indians imagining they had not been paid for all tlicir lands, a number of them came to Philadel- phia in 1718 to demand what was due them. Their complaint was heard in council, and a great number of deeds they had previously made with the Proprietary were presented. They were satisfied from the deeds that they had been paid for their lands from Duck creek (at the head of Delaware bay), to near the Forks of Delaware, and executed a release for all those lands and of all demands what- soever, on account of purchases between these points. This deed was executed the 17thi of September, 1718, and embraced all the land between Duck creek and the South mountain. This treaty and the deed under it appear to have settled all controversy between the Proprietary and the Indians down to that period. The deed of 1686 does not appear to have been mentioned in this transaction, or, if it was, this new deed was thought to cover the purchase pro- vided by it. The terms of the deed are : " We therefore, in gratitude for said presents, as well in consideration of the several grants made by our ancestors and predecessors, as of the said several goods herein before mentioned, the receipt whereof we do hereby acknowledge, do, by these presents, for us, our heirs and successors, grant and remise, release and forever quit c aim unto the said William Penn, his heirs and assigns, all the said lands situated between the said two rivers of Delaware and Susquehanna from Duck creek to the mount. ains on this side Leechay," etc. The map accompanying "Charles Thomson's Inquiry," and drawn in 1759, shows the " Leechay hills" stretching away from near the mouth of the Lehigh to the Susquehanna, above the mouth of Conestoga creek. The map has various Indian purchases marked out upon it, and among them is that which "describes the lands granted by the Indians' walking sale, as lately walked out by W. Peason, containing three hundred and thirty thousand acres." The line begins at the Neshaminy where that from the spruce tree strikes that creek, and which it fol- lows up to the "Leechay hills," thence along these hills to the Delaware, and down the same to the spruce tree. When was this
492
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
walked out and what for ? The deed of 1718 confirms the purchase of all of Bucks county above the purchase of 1682. It leaves no room for doubt. From it we learn that the Delaware Indians had no title to lands south of the Lehigh, and the Proprietary had no right to claim the lands north of that river. So far as the deed of 1718 is considered, it seems to have adjusted all differences between the Proprietary and Indians that had grown up under previous deeds. In 1727, when some persons wanted to take up lands in the Mini- sink, James Logan wrote John Watson, the surveyor of Bucks county, to prevent it ; nor would he permit land to be surveyed four miles above Durham, on the ground that it had not yet been pur- chased of the Indians. The Indians were a good deal provoked be- cause Thomas Penn caused a number of tracts to be surveyed in the Forks of Delaware under his lottery scheme of 1733-34, several of which were taken up and settled upon.
There has been considerable controversy as to the exact point from which the walkers started on the morning of the 19th of Sep- tember, 1737. Some contend that the chestnut tree stood below Wrightstown meeting-house, while there are not wanting those who believe it was as low down as Newtown. A witness of that period, Thomas Janney, stated that he saw Yeates, Jennings, and Marshall pass through Newtown on the Great Walk ; while Samuel Preston states that Marshall related to him an account of his great walk from Bristol to "Stillwater." Of course there is no truth in these statements so far as the walk of 1737 is concerned. One simple fact is sufficient to controvert these statements, that the walk was to start from the head line of the purchase of 1682, which ran from the mouth of Knowles' creek, in Upper Makefield, through the lower end of Wrightstown to the Neshaminy. It is not probable that the Proprietaries would begin the walk several miles below the line fixed upon, and thus reduce the extent of the purchase. Neverthe- less we will bring a few witnesses upon the stand and let them tell what they know about the starting point.
Among those who accompanied the walkers was Thomas Furness, a saddler of Newtown, who had learned the particulars of what was to take place of James Yeates, one of the walkers. He went to the place of starting on the morning in question, " at a chestnut tree, near the turning out of the road from Durham road to John Chapman's," who lived on the road from Wrightstown meeting- house to Pennsville. They had gone when he arrived, but pushing
493
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
on he overtook them before they reached Buckingham, and continued with them to the end. He was probably on horseback. Besides fixing the place of starting, Furness gives some incidents of the walk. He states that the Indians left the afternoon of the first day, being dissatisfied with the manner in which the walk was made. The first day twelve hours were walked, and it was twilight some time before they stopped to give them the exact time, that they had a piece of rising ground to ascend and that he called out to them to " pull up," which they did, and that when he said the time was out, Marshall clasped his arms about a sappling for support, and on the sheriff asking what was the matter, he said he was almost gone, and could not have walked many polls further. They lodged in the woods that night, and could hear the Indians shouting at a cantico which they held in a town near by. Before the Indians left the walkers, they complained of the unfairness of the walk, that the walkers would pass all the good land and it was not worth while for them to go any further. The Indians refused to resume the walk the next morning. As the parties returned from the walk, coming near the Indian town, an Indian made a hostile demonstration with a gun, but he did nothing further. Joseph Knowles, a nephew of Sheriff Smith, and lived with him at the time, went with him on the walk, to carry provisions, and was also present at the preliminary walk and assisted to blaze the trees. In a public statement made thirty years afterward, he agrees with Furness as to the place of starting, which, he says, was "at John Chapman's corner, at Wrightstown." John Chapman, who owned the land on which the tree stood, accompanied the walk, and his grand-nephew, Edward Chapman, who was born and died in the township, at the age of ninety-one, had a recollection of the chestnut tree, which blew down about 1765. He said the tree stood where located by his uncle, on the south side of the Pennsville road where it strikes the Durham road, and now in a corner of the Wrightstown meeting property. Steel writes to Nicholas Scull the 28th of August, 1737, requesting him and John Chapman to run the head-line of the pur- chase of 1682, from the Delaware to Neshaminy, and he sent the Indian deed to Scull, to aid them in running it. The Proprietaries wanted this done because " from the second course or line from the spruce tree, the day-and-a-half journey, is to begin." No doubt this line, which crossed the Durham road about where the chestnut tree stood, was re-run, and the tree fixed upon as the starting point,
494
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
because it was a well-known landmark. Scull, afterward surveyor- general, in a sworn statement made before the provincial council in 1757, says that he accompanied the walk, that besides himself were Benjamin Eastburn, surveyor-general, and Timothy Smith, sheriff of the county, that the distance was about fifty-five statute miles, that they walked eighteen hours, and that it was fairly done, that the night after the walk was completed, he and Eastburn, and some others staid at an Indian town called Poahopohkunk, where there were many Delaware Indians, among whom was one known as Captain Harrison, a noted man among them, but he did not re- member 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 Wrightstown.s There is a discrepance 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 they started in the morning, and ate supper after they stopped in the evening. After the walk was made surveyors were sent to mark out the tract included in the purchase, which enabled the authorities to fill up the lines left blank in the treaty.
The traditional and other testimony of the Chapman family of Wrightstown 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-cne, said the chestnut tree stood in the field now owned by Martha Chapman at the south-west 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 that lie had swung upon the branches after it was blown or cut 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 in 1715 and had a family of six sons and two daughters, John, the eldest, born in 1716, and Joseph, the youngest, in 1733, all born prior to the Great Walk.
5 In the early 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."
495
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
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 integrity and veracity. Many of their children lived to an advanced age, and died in the memory of persons now living, and the children of others deceased 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 road from Pennsville joins the Durham road. They must have often heard their father and uncles speak of the matter, and being born and brought up on the 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 north-west corner of the graveyard.
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 in 1756, and according to measurement 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 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 north-east 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 sup- posed to have been the southerly branch of Knowles' creek, 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, re- membered, 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
496
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
1
the ground on Penn's side only, and not to meddle with theirs This line run west, south-west to the Neshaminy.
Of the three white men who started upon the Great Walk of 1737, Marshall 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 was a good officer. Solomon Jennings was a commissioner of the county in 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, one of which married Nicholas Scull. He died February 15th, 1757, and was buried in the family graveyard on the farm. After the death of his widow, in 1764, the two hundred acres were sold at public sale to Jacob Geisinger, of Saucon township, the ancestor of the present owner, and also one hundred and sixty-four acres adjoining. James Yeates lived in Newtown, but probably died before he reached his home. He came from New England.
Edward Marshall was a native of Bustleton, Philadelphia county, where he was born in 1710, which makes him twenty-seven years .old when he performed the Great Walk. He was a hunter by occu- pation and choice. He was twice married and was 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 first wife near where Stroudsburg, Monroe county, stands. In his absence from home hostile Indians came to his house, when his wife fled, but was over- taken and killed, with two unborn infants. From this time Marshall swore vengeance against the Indians, and never lost an opportunity to kill 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
497
HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY.
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 Tinicum, which bears his name, 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 follow- ing inscription :
" In memory of Edward Marshall, senior, who departed this life November 7th, 1789, aged seventy-nine years.
"Unveil thy bosom 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 12th, 1807, aged eighty years," his second wife. Of his children William died at the age of eighty, at the month of Tinicum creek, Catharine was the maternal grandmother of many of the Ridges of Tinicum, and Marshall's island, which contained two hundred and fifty acres when Edward Marshall lived on it, was given to his sons, Martin and William. Moses 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 bee-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 rifle that Edward Marshall carried is now owned by his grandson, William Ridge, of Tinicum, who lives on the Delaware a short dis- tance below the mouth of Tinicum creek. It is a flint-lock, in good condition, and the name of the German maker, or the place where made, stamped on the barrel. The family tradition is that
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