William Penn's First Walking Purchase

This spot, Towissinck, or Jerricho Creek, marks the northern limit of William Penn's very first purchase of Native American land, completed in sixteen eighty-two. Penn acquired the tract using a method agreed upon with the Lenape: the distance a man could walk in a day and a half, starting from the mouth of Neshaminy Creek.

Penn is said to have walked the boundary himself. The land lay in what are now townships including Bristol, Falls, Middletown, Newtown, and Lower and part of Upper Makefield. This original Walking Purchase stands apart from the notorious seventeen thirty-seven version, in which Penn's sons used paid runners to claim vastly more land through deception. Penn's own purchase here was seen, by the standards of his era, as an honest and negotiated transaction.