Mason dixon line what was it

This also proved important in settling land disputes since frontiersmen had a more accurate way to mark their borders. The latitude measurement was primarily used by the Royal Society to add upon the work of the French Academie Royale des Sciences in defining the size and shape of the Earth.

Luckily for Mason and Dixon, by the end of they were on the move again and were able to extend the West Line eastward to the Delaware River. While they waited for the spring of to travel, they spent the winter making the first gravity observations in America. Mason and Dixon continue west again in July and made it to the Cheat River, which is part of the modern-day Fayette County. It had been nearly four years since they started their survey, but they had reached an impassable roadblock - hostile citizens.

Mason and Dixon were unable to get any closer than about 36 miles away from the westernmost end of the line. The portion of the boundary line surveyed by Mason and Dixon was formally approved in early November , which ended a battle between the Penns and the Calverts that had been ongoing for nearly 80 years.

Ultimately, Mason and Dixon were not the ones to finish the project although the boundary still bears their names in memorial. In , David Rittenhouse, the city surveyor for Philadelphia, set the remaining borders for between Pennsylvania and the surrounding colonies Maryland, New York and Virginia, as well as what would later become the Northwest Territory.

His boundary lines between Pennsylvania and Maryland extended Mason and Dixon's work the 36 miles needed to reach its western destination. As one studies the southern border of Pennsylvania, the boundary is anything but a horizontal line and it ignores any prominent land marks.

In fact, it may even seem arbitrary for many observers, since most colonial borderlines were marked by natural dividers, such as rivers or a mountain range. However, considering the historical context of the line, the rises and fall of the line across the mountain ranges of the state match the challenges and obstacles in creating the boundary line more than years ago.

Although Maryland is not always considered to be a southern state, the Mason-Dixon Line has become known as the boundary between the North and the South. When Mason and Dixon surveyed the land in the late 18th century, the border was never about slavery, yet it took on that association on March 1, , when the Pennsylvania Assembly passed legislation ending slavery in the state.

They made the Mason-Dixon Line as the boundary between slave territory and free land, since slavery was still allowed in Maryland. The border between Pennsylvania and Maryland became tied to the North and South divide, especially after the Missouri Compromise was passed in , which prohibited slavery north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

To the many slaves who used whatever means necessary to reach free land, the Mason-Dixon Line became important to their freedom. For the slaves located in Maryland, they only needed to get to the state line to secure their freedom, although many continued traveling north in an attempt to get as far away from their former masters as possible. Even today, the association of Pennsylvania's northern status lingers.

Even in popular culture references, it is clear to see the impact of Mason and Dixon's surveying. Throughout the movie, the north is depicted as being barren and empty, while the south is lush and green. However, even kings can make mistakes, and when Charles II granted William Penn a charter for land in America, he gave him territory that he had already granted to both Maryland and Delaware!

What an idiot!? He was an early advocate of democracy and religious freedom, notable for his good relations and successful treaties with the Lenape Native Americans. Under his direction, the city of Philadelphia was planned and developed. Philadelphia was planned out to be grid-like with its streets and be very easy to navigate, unlike London where Penn was from. The streets are named with numbers and tree names. But in his defense, the map he was using was inaccurate, and this threw everything out of whack.

But as all the colonies grew in population and sought to expand westward , the matter of the unresolved border became a much more prominent in mid-Atlantic politics. In colonial times, as in modern times, too, borders and boundaries were critical. Lord Baltimore was an English nobleman who was the first Proprietor of the Province of Maryland, ninth Proprietary Governor of the Colony of Newfoundland and second of the colony of Province of Avalon to its southeast.

A problem arose when Charles II granted a charter for Pennsylvania in Negotiations ensued after the problem was discovered in As a result, solving this border dispute became a major issue, and it became an even bigger deal when violent conflict broke out in the mids over land claimed by both people from Pennsylvania and Maryland.

To stop this madness, the Penns, who controlled Pennsylvania, and the Calverts, who were in charge of Maryland, hired Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon to survey the territory and draw a boundary line to which everyone could agree. But Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon only did this because the Maryland governor had agreed to a border with Delaware. He later argued the terms he signed to were not the ones he had agreed to in person, but the courts made him stick to what was on paper. Always read the fine print!

This agreement made it easier to settle the dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland because they could use the now established boundary between Maryland and Delaware as a reference. All they had to do was extend a line west from the southern boundary of Philadelphia, and…. Limestone markers measuring up to 5ft 1. Later, in , Pennsylvania and Virginia agreed to extend the Mason-Dixon Line west by five degrees of longitude to create the border between the two colines-turned-states By , the American Revolution was underway and the colonies were no longer colonies.

The official journal of the Mason-Dixon expedition shows they passed No. As the survey party skirted the homes of settlers, some of them learned for the first time whether they were residents of Maryland or Pennsylvania. The current survey was initiated by Richard Ortt, director of the Maryland Department of Geological Survey, who is overseeing the project.

So far, monuments have been surveyed. Five are missing, and about 25 have yet to be located. To qualify for the designation, the project must be completed by August The lesser-known part of the line, which now separates Maryland and Delaware, was placed on the National Register in through the efforts of the Delaware Historic Preservation Office. The boundary begins at Fenwick Island, Del. This section is significant only as a state boundary, however, because both states allowed slave ownership.

The still-unprotected mile east-west line achieved lasting fame on March 1, , when Pennsylvania abolished slavery, and it became the boundary not just between Pennsylvania and Maryland, but between freedom and slavery. Pennsylvania was an important thoroughfare on the Underground Railroad. In all, several thousand formerly enslaved people found their freedom following an imagined railroad across an imaginary line. Mason and Dixon confirmed earlier survey work which delineated Delaware's southern boundary from the Atlantic Ocean to the "Middle Point" stone along what is today known as the Transpeninsular Line.

They proceeded nearly due north from this to the Pennsylvania border. Later the line was marked in places by additional benchmarks and survey markers. The lines have been resurveyed several times over the centuries without substantive changes to Mason and Dixon's work. The stones may be a few to a few hundred feet east or west of the point Mason and Dixon thought they were; in any event, the line drawn from stone to stone forms the legal boundary.

The marker "MDP Corner" dates from and is offset on purpose. Visitors to the tripoint are strongly encouraged to first obtain permission from the nearest landowner, or use the path from the arc corner monument which is bordered by Delaware parkland most of the way, and Pennslyvania parkland the entire way.

Due to incorrect maps and confusing legal descriptions, the royal charters of the three colonies overlapped. The most serious problem was that the Maryland claim would put Philadelphia , which became the major city in Pennsylvania, within Maryland.

A protracted legal dispute between the Calvert family, which controlled Maryland, and the Penn family, which controlled Pennsylvania and the "Three Lower Counties" Delaware , was ended by the ruling that the boundary should be fixed as follows:.

The disputants engaged an expert British team, astronomer Charles Mason and surveyor Jeremiah Dixon , to survey what became known as the Mason-Dixon Line.

To them the money was well spent, for in a new country there was no other way of establishing ownership.