ISLANDS IN THE DELAWARE
Marshall's Island – is a few miles south of Frenchtown, and is part of Tinicum Township, Pa. The 200-acre island is a refuge for bald eagles, now. But back in the late 1700s, it was a refuge for a man that the Indians wanted to kill.
Here's why: In 1737 most of Bucks County belonged to the Lenni-Lenape tribe. But two of William Penn's sons decided to cheat them out of that land -- and more.
They told the Indians their father had bought some of that land before he died. That was news to the Indians, but they finally gave in. The white men would get a triangular piece of property. One boundary would be the Delaware River, and another boundary would be “as far as a man walks in a day and half.” For the Indians, that was a real measurement.
Walking through wild country, taking time out for hunting, smoking and napping, an Indian might cover 30 miles in a day and a half.
The Penn brothers arranged to pace off the boundary with the Indians as witnesses. But the brothers cheated. First they had a crew clear a trail through the wilderness for fast travel. Then they hired the three fastest runners they could find, and promised 500 acres of land to whoever ran the farthest.
When the three men took off at a run, the Indians said, “Hey! That's not how a man walks!” They couldn't even keep up, so they went home – angry.
Two of the runners wore out, but young Edward Marshall didn't. He ran 65 miles, thereby claiming way more land than the Indians were offering. This notorious swindle is known as The Walking Purchase.
Some of the Indians gave up and moved west. But the angriest ones stuck around and raided the new white settlements. Whether Edward Marshall was No. 1 on their to-do list or not, they attacked his farm and killed his wife, Elizabeth, but he wasn't home. A year later they attacked again and killed his son, but he wasn't home that time, either.
Marshall remarried (another Elizabeth) and replenished his supply of children, but he was afraid the Indians would come back for him. So he took his family into hiding on the island, and lived out his life there, dying in 1789 at age 73 – of natural causes. At least that's what many historians say.
In C.P. Yoder's “Delaware Canal Journal” (1972), Marshall descendant Sarah Ridge asserted that Marshall had owned the island and farmed it, but lived nearby on the Pennsylvania riverbank in a stone house in the Smithtown section of Tinicum Townshp. Another descendant Ernie Schaible also told the News that Edward didn't live on the island, but his brothers Thomas and Moses did, and that furthermore Edward's wife and two children were massacred where they were hiding in the 3-foot-deep cellar of that stone house in Smithtown.
But everyone agrees that Marshall was never given the acreage he'd been promised by the Penn brothers.
More on that island's more-recent history later.
From "Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia"
I wonder if the Native Americans were upset by the "18-hour" day as well? Or was that normal? That's a long day!