Walking Purchase records, 1735-1738 MC.950.175 Finding aid prepared by Kara Flynn
This finding aid was produced using the Archivists' Toolkit April 01, 2016 Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections March 2016 370 Lancaster Ave Haverford, PA, 19041 610-896-1161 [email protected] Walking Purchase records, 1735-1738 MC.950.175
Table of Contents
Summary Information ...... 3 Historical note...... 4 Scope and Content note...... 4 Administrative Information ...... 4 Related Materials ...... 5 Controlled Access Headings...... 5 Collection Inventory...... 6
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Summary Information
Repository Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections
Creator Chapman, John
Creator Doan, Joseph
Creator Penn, Thomas, 1702-1775
Creator Smith, Timothy
Title Walking Purchase records
Date 1735-1738
Extent 1.0 Folder
Language English
Preferred Citation Walking Purchase records (MC.950.175), Quaker & Special Collections, Haverford College, Haverford, PA.
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Historical note
Walking Purchase, (Aug. 25, 1737), land swindle perpetrated by Pennsylvania authorities on the Delaware Indians, who had been the tribe most friendly to William Penn when he founded the colony in the previous century. Colonial authorities claimed to have found a lost treaty, of 1686, ceding a tract of Delaware tribal land between the fork of the Delaware and Lehigh rivers that extended as far as a man could walk in 1 1/2 days—about 40 miles. William Penn’s son Thomas Penn (1702–75), who was proprietor of Pennsylvania in 1737, hired the three fastest walkers in the colony and offered a large prize to the one who could cover the most land. The winner, running on a carefully cleared path, crossed more than twice the land the Delaware had anticipated—causing the tribe to lose about 1,200 square miles (3,100 square km) of their land. At Thomas Penn’s request, members of the Iroquois Confederacy helped enforce this unpopular decision. In reaction to this and other frauds, the Delaware joined the French in the Ohio country and returned to ravage the Pennsylvania frontier during the last French and Indian War (1756–63). In 1758 the northern half of the purchase was relinquished to the Iroquois Confederacy; the Delaware received £400 in compensation for it four years later. Source: Encyclopedia Britannica
Scope and Content note
Single folder of materials related to the 1737 purchase of land in Pennsylvania from the Delaware tribe. Included in this collection are accounts submitted by participants--Joseph Doan, John Chapman, Timothy Smith--for the trial walk of April 22, 1735 and the September walk; requests for payment of these accounts by the Proprietor of Pennsylvania, Thomas Penn to James Steel, Receiver General of Penna.; two accounts submitted for payment by Conrad Weiser, an Indian agent from N.Y., for his journey to Wyoming.
Administrative Information
Publication Information Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections March 2016
Use Restrictions
- Page 4 - Walking Purchase records, 1735-1738 MC.950.175 Standard Federal Copyright Law Applies (U.S. Title 17).
Acquisition The Walking Purchase records were donated to Quaker & Special Collections, Haverford College, in 1975 by the estate of Albert L. Baily, through Mr. and Mrs. Charels Brown of Westtown School.
Processing Information Processed by Kara Flynn; completed March 2016.
Related Materials
Related materials MC 1182 Dorothy Merriman Schall papers
Controlled Access Headings
Genre(s)
• Financial records
Subject(s)
• Delaware Indians--Land tenure--Pennsylvania--History--18th century. • Delaware Indians. • Pennsylvania--History.
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Collection Inventory
Records 1735-1738
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