When was mason dixon line made

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.

The most difficult task was fixing the Tangent Line, as they had to confirm the accuracy of the Transpeninsular Line mid-point and the Twelve-Mile Circle, determine the tangent point along the circle, then actually survey and monument the border.

They then surveyed the North and Arc Lines. They did this work between and This actually left a small wedge of land in dispute between Delaware and Pennsylvania until They were commissioned to run it for a distance of five degrees of longitude west from the Delaware River, fixing the western boundary of Pennsylvania see the entry for Yohogania County.

However, in October at Dunkard Creek near Mount Morris, Pennsylvania , nearly miles km west of the Delaware, a group of Native Americans forced them to quit their progress. In , surveyors David Rittenhouse and Andrew Ellicott and their crew completed the survey of the Mason-Dixon line to the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, five degrees from the Delaware River. Other surveyors continued west to the Ohio River.

The section of the line between the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania and the river is the county line between Marshall and Wetzel counties, West Virginia. The Missouri Compromise of created the political conditions which made the Mason-Dixon Line important to the history of slavery. It was during the Congressional debates leading up to the compromise that the term "Mason-Dixon line" was first used to designate the entire boundary between free states and slave states.

President John F. 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. More recently, the award-winning Rocky Balboa film, the final film in the Rocky series, features a character named Mason "The Line" Dixon, which is significant since the movie is set in Philadelphia.

On the music charts, many country songs mention the south being defined as below the Mason-Dixon Line. Johnny Cash sings about the border in his song, "Hey Porter.

The novel brings the history of the surveyors and their work to life by suggesting what they may have experienced, based on their original journal entries. When the Mason-Dixon Line was originally finished, it was marked by more than 12" square monuments at 1-mile intervals. Each stone marked had a P on the north side, representing Pennsylvania land, and on the south side, an M was engraved, marking Maryland. Also, there was a larger stone placed every five miles, which was engraved with the Penn coat of arms on the Pennsylvania side and the Calvert coat of arms on the Maryland side.

However, not all of those stones remain in the 21st century. According to Bijal P. Trivedi's National Geographic article entitled "Saving the Mason-Dixon Line," for over a decade two current surveyors Todd Babcock and Dilwyn Knott have been working to locate and document every stone that Mason and Dixon laid in the lateth century to mark the Pennsylvania-Maryland line.

In the article, Babcock said: "We're losing the stones at an increasing rate so it's very important that we obtain the precise location of each stone so we can go back and repair damaged stones and replace lost ones.

When Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon arrived in Philadelphia in November , no one would have recognized them apart from the other passengers on the ship. However, after their five-year stay in the American colonies, their names are forever remembered with the border that separates Pennsylvania from Maryland and the other surrounding states.

During the American Civil War , citizens residing in states north of the line were referred to as Yankees while persons south of the line were called Rebels. Immediately following the war, the Mason and Dixon Line was quoted as a cultural, social, and political boundary.

Presently, while the Mason-Dixon Line, or Mason-Dixon, remains the nation's expository boundary separating the North and South, it represents the bisection of continuing sectional differences in political and social ideologies. Purpose The Penn and Calvert families had hired Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, English surveyors, to settle their dispute over the boundary between their two proprietary colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland.

In the s the Mason-Dixon Line became symbolic of the nation's division between the "free states" and "slave states" from the Missouri Compromise of until the end of the American Civil War in Although Pennsylvania abolished slavery before the end of the American Revolution, Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri, also known as Border States , remained slave states until the end of the war.

Historically, the Mason-Dixon Line served to settle a border dispute between the Penn and Calvert families, but today the boundary simply illustrates sectional differences between North and South, Northerner and Southerner, as the diverging social, cultural, and political.

First Usage The first usage of the term "Mason and Dixon Line" was the political coinage of "Mason-Dixon Line" in the congressional debates over the bill known as the Missouri Compromise of , which sought to define the northern limit of the slave-owning states.

Enhanced to Scale Map. Mason-Dixon Line History Lesson. The survey, which would be known as the Mason and Dixon Line, or Mason-Dixon Line, was commissioned by the Penn family of Pennsylvania and Calvert family of Maryland to settle their long-running boundary dispute.

After the Civil War, the line continued to be considered a cultural boundary. Debate whether Border States such as Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and West Virginia belong on the north or south side of this boundary line continues to this day. A common assumption of the split between Northern and Southern U. Maryland and Pennsylvania both claimed the land between the 39th and 40th parallels according to the charters granted to each colony.

In the proprietary governor of Maryland, Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, signed an agreement with William Penn's sons which drew a line somewhere in between, and also renounced the Calvert claim to Delaware. But later, Lord Baltimore claimed that the document he signed did not contain the terms he had agreed to, and refused to put the agreement into effect.

Beginning in the mids, violence erupted between settlers claiming various loyalties to Maryland and Pennsylvania. The border conflict between Pennsylvania and Maryland would be known as Cresap's War. The issue was unresolved until the Crown intervened in , ordering Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimore to accept the agreement. After Pennsylvania abolished slavery in , the western part of this line and the Ohio River became a border between free and slave states, although Delaware remained a slave state.

Mason and Dixon's actual survey line began to the south of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and extended from a benchmark east to the Delaware River and west to what was then the boundary with western Virginia. The surveyors also fixed the boundary between Delaware and Pennsylvania and the approximately north—south portion of the boundary between Delaware and Maryland.

Most of the Delaware—Pennsylvania boundary is a circular arc, and the Delaware—Maryland boundary does not run truly north-south because it was intended to bisect the Delmarva Peninsula rather than follow a meridian. As such, the line approximates a segment of a small circle upon the surface of the also approximately spherical Earth.

An observer standing on such a line and viewing its path toward an unobstructed horizon, would perceive it to bend away from his line of sight, an effect of the inequality between the amount of curvature to his left and right. Among parallels of latitude, only the Equator is a great circle and would not exhibit this effect. The surveyors also extended the boundary line to run or extend between Pennsylvania and colonial western Virginia, which became West Virginia after the American Civil War, though this was contrary to their original charter; this extension of the line was only confirmed later.

Crownstones include the two coats-of-arms. Today, while a number of the original stones are missing or buried, many are still visible, resting on public land and protected by iron cages.

They proceeded nearly due north from this to the Pennsylvania border. The most difficult task was fixing the Tangent Line, as they had to confirm the accuracy of the Transpeninsular Line mid-point and the Twelve-Mile Circle, determine the tangent point along the circle, then actually survey and monument the border.

They then surveyed the North and Arc Lines. They performed this work between and , and this actually left a small wedge of land in dispute between Delaware and Pennsylvania until They were commissioned to run it for a distance of five degrees of longitude west from the Delaware River, fixing the western boundary of Pennsylvania.

But in October at Dunkard Creek near Mount Morris, Pennsylvania, nearly miles west of the Delaware, their Iroquois guides had reached the border of the Lenape, an enemy, and forced them to halt their progress.

On October 11, they made their final observations at miles from their starting point. In , surveyors David Rittenhouse and Andrew Ellicott and their crew completed the survey of the Mason-Dixon Line to the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, five degrees from the Delaware River. Other surveyors continued west to the Ohio River. The section of the line between the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania and the river is the county line between Marshall and Wetzel counties, West Virginia.

The Missouri Compromise of created the political conditions which made the Mason-Dixon Line important to the history of slavery. It was during the Congressional debates leading up to the compromise that the term "Mason-Dixon Line" was first used to designate the entire boundary between free states and slave states. The boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland has been resurveyed three times: in , , and in the s.

President John F. Kennedy opened a newly completed section of Interstate 95 where it crossed the Maryland-Delaware border. It was his last public appearance, because 8 days later in Dallas, Texas, he was assassinated.

The Delaware Turnpike and the Maryland portion of the new road were each later designated as the John F. Kennedy Memorial Highway. US History. Conclusion One hundred years after Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon began their monumental effort to chart the boundary, American soldiers from opposite sides of the line fought and died on the fields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in what would become the final and fatal attempt of the Southern states to breach the Mason-Dixon Line during the American Civil War Although the guns of the conflict have long since been silenced and the participants of both sides have been buried, citizens continue to remember, commemorate, and even debate the Civil War.