ROOTS & BRANCHES

We all have blind spots.

And I’ll admit to plenty of my own … as well as understanding that I have more waiting to be discovered.

For the past the decade, I have occasionally marketed framed pieces under the brand of “From the Penns to the Present.”

The signature for the product is taking a photo of one of the land documents (sometimes even one signed by a member of the Penns in the capacity of proprietors of the colony), putting together a deed chain with the dates and names of the properties’ owners, and then wrapping it in a frame with a seasoned look to it.

I’ve done these frames for Realtors to present as settlement gifts, for people celebrating newly purchased or renovated properties, and a few for friends and members of my church.

But a rather huge blind spot of my own came into focus, so to say, when took the lens to what I thought I knew about the original acquisition of land by the Penns.

I recall pretty distinctly in the unit on Pennsylvania history in fourth grade with Mrs. Erma Loose that we should be proud of the fact that colony founder William Penn made treaties with and bought the land of Pennsylvania fair and square from the Lenni Lenape tribe.

Of course, she didn’t talk about the infamous Walking Purchase of the 1730s, when William Penn’s sons hired runners to decide the extent of a land transaction that referenced “as far as a man can walk in a day and a half.”

But partially in Mrs. Loose’s defense, the area of the Walking Purchase was the Lehigh Valley, not what became Berks County (which Mrs. Loose described poetically as being shaped like a baseball diamond with the city of Reading being the pitcher’s mound—yes, somehow I recall this from a half century ago!)

So, what about the areas purchased in 1732 and 1736 that later became Berks County, including my own home in Bern Township?

Here’s where the shine comes off the pride. Unlike William Penn’s original purchases in the 1680s directly from the Lenni Lenape living right in southeastern Pennsylvania, these treaties were made with the Iroquois Confederacy, under whose “protection” the Lenape now lived.

And why did the Lenape need “protection?” Well, they’d been weakened and diminished by European diseases. The Penns, helped in part by their agent and translator Conrad Weiser, were now dealing with a Native American people who didn’t live on the land being sold.

Now, sure, I can give myself an out by saying the brand’s name is “From the Penns to the Present.” But whether that brand is retained, you can be sure there’ll be a mention of “Lenni Lenape land” on any such products in the future.