Welcome to the Lehigh Valley Landmarks with Leon podcast series, celebrating 250 years of independence. I'm your host, Rachel Leon. Since being elected in 2022 and serving as Vice President of Bethlehem City Council, I'm humbled by the opportunity to serve the diverse communities that make up our great city. But to understand where we're going, we need to understand our past. Each week, I'll share a short feature with a big story about the 250 years that made the Lehigh Valley and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, known as the Christmas City, as we explore historic landmarks.
The land upon which the city of Bethlehem was founded was acquired by white settlers in the 1730s in a questionable incident called the Walking Purchase.
It involved the sons of Pennsylvania’s distinguished founder, Mr. William Penn, and the Lenni Lenape.
In 1737, three colonists were hired by Penn’s son Thomas for their proficiency as fast walkers to cover as much terrain as they could in a day and a half.
As a reward, 500 acres was promised to the walker who went the farthest. The remaining terrain between start and the finish line was extended to the Delaware River and went to Penn as Proprietor of Pennsylvania.
In the end, through trickery and fraud, the Penn family acquired almost a million acres which included the area where Bethlehem, Allentown and Easton stand today. This land, however, was not uninhabited. And the vast majority of the Lenape population were forced off these lands and removed from the Lehigh Valley.
To understand the swindle, one must appreciate three aspects of the story. First, the “walkers” were trained runners who prepared months in advance. They followed paths that had been cleared of brush and were able to cover much more territory.
The Lenape agreed to the plan because they assumed the measure would be taken as a slow walk by normal men who would rest, eat, hunt and smoke along the way. This, however, was not what Penn and the hired runners had in mind.
Second, it was unfair because Penn used false maps to deceive the Lenape chiefs into agreeing to the Walking Purchase plot. To put it simply, they didn’t know what they were giving up.
Also, as a result of how the surveying lines were drawn, the native people lost thousands of acres of hunting grounds. Lenape's loss was Penn’s profit. He sold all that land to European migrant farmers.
Finally, the Walking Purchase agreement was based on a fraudulent deed from 1686 to intentionally mislead Lenape leadership.
The walk began near Doylestown Pennsylvania at dawn. Of the three trained runners who were given 5 pounds cash to cover as much land as possible — Edward Marshall, James Yeates and Solomon Jennings — Jennings was the only resident of the Bethlehem area and had a farm in present day Fountain Hill.
Jennings only traveled about 18 miles and gave up on the first day. He collapsed of exhaustion in Hellertown and returned to his farm.
The next morning an exhausted Yeates fell into the freezing water of the Tobyhanna creek. After the strenuous pace of the first day he went blind and died three days later.
Although Marshall made it to Jim Thorpe and won the 500 acres, he was plagued by tragedy and violence the rest of his days.
The Moravian settlers who would later establish Bethlehem in 1741 were likely aware of the Walking Purchase, but had little involvement. It would take decades of legal battles before the full extent of the fraud was made evident.
Information for this episode was provided by the Moravian Church Archives, Lehigh University, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and the Monroe County Historical Association.
A special thanks to Dr. Whitney Howarth, historian and restorative practitioner for her writing contribution for this episode.
