The first person to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope did so in June 1860. This cartoon parodies President James Buchanan’s unsuccessful attempts to politically balance the many disagreements between the North and the South.
Since then, the Mason-Dixon Line, a reference once found peppering everyday talk, has largely become a topic mentioned only in history books and on highway signs along the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania. But the line has not been completely forgotten, nor should it be.
LIKE PEOPLE LIVING in the mid-1800s, most people today perceive the Mason-Dixon Line as the boundary between the North and the South or between free and slave states. Some politicians and news media refer to it as the line between red states, which tend to support the Republican party in general elections, and blue states, which tend to support the Democratic party. That is, if they think of it at all. However, the Mason-Dixon Line should not be forgotten: it still is the boundary line separating Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. And some people are still interested in the line. For them, it has become a way to erase the boundary of time.
In the Old City area of Philadelphia, it’s hard to walk more than a couple of blocks without seeing a historical marker. Philadelphia resident Janine Black wondered why no historical marker had been erected in her neighborhood, where the Plumstead-Huddle house had stood. After all, she figured, colonial officials had determined that the north wall of the house had been Philadelphia’s southernmost point, and it was the spot where Mason and Dixon began their famous survey. In 2009, she contacted surveyor Todd Babcock, a founding member of the Mason & Dixon Line Preservation Partnership (MDLPP), an organization dedicated to locating, inventorying, and preserving the line’s boundary stones. Babcock told Black that a historical marker could not be established unless a deed specifically describing the house’s location could be found. And so far that hadn’t happened.
Black, a college professor, sensed the search for the missing deed would be an interesting research project for students. That’s how she met Indiah Fortune, Matthew McDermott, and Amanda Veloz. “Professor Black contacted my history professor, looking for students who could undertake a research project for her,” McDermott recently recalled. “My professor told her I was a student who liked to hunt and sort through old files and was willing to dig for information. Our primary task was to find the location of a house that was no longer there.”
When the three began their task at the Pennsylvania State Archives and the Pennsylvania Historical Society, they had no idea what to expect. “To begin the research,” Fortune explained, “we looked through the Deed Book in the Philadelphia City Archives, which contained all the deeds during the 1700s that included either the Plumstead or Huddle surname. Janine provided us with a ton of information on what to look for while we were searching the old deeds. We were very careful while reviewing the deed book, because it was extremely aged and fragile. As a precaution, we tried to only touch the edges of the pages so they wouldn’t deteriorate any further.” They could handle some documents only while wearing white cotton gloves that protect old paper from the oils found on human skin.
Having been told that names were often spelled many different ways in colonial documents, the students decided to check all the deeds with variant spellings of Plumstead and Huddle. The list was long and quickly offered another stumbling block. “Reading eighteenth-century handwriting was no easy task,” McDermott said with a laugh. “Words are spelled differently, the phrasing of language is not the same as we use, and the letter s when used in the middle of a word was shaped like the letter f. It took a while to get used to it.” But, Fortune added, “the longer I looked at different deeds, the easier it became to understand.”
The student researchers gradually zeroed in on their target. McDermott found a newspaper article from the l860s that precisely described the location of the house. Then, in May 2010, Fortune found a 1754 deed for a house owned by Huddle. “When I realized that the deed I found had all the required information to be considered the first surveyed point of the Mason-Dixon Line, I was excited,” recalled Fortune. “But I don’t think it occurred to me how historic my discovery was until much later on.” The site described on the deed matched that on another city record regarding the house’s location. Several months later, Amanda Veloz found an insurance card that confirmed the Plumstead-Huddle house was located at the corner of Water Street and Cedar Street.
But hopes of exploring the home’s site ended when Todd Babcock measured the neighborhood and discovered that the land where the house stood is now buried beneath the pavement of Interstate 95. Did the students feel that the search for the Plumstead-Huddle house — Mason and Dixon’s starting point — had still been worth the time and effort? “It was all worth it,” said McDermott. “Sometimes I read firsthand accounts written by Mason, Dixon, and William Penn’s sons. Some of the papers still had candle-wax seals on them. It was unreal to see them. . . . Words can’t describe how I felt.” Fortune seconded McDermott’s thoughts: “This has been a truly amazing experience and I am so grateful to have been involved in such a monumental part of history. It was interesting to learn about the lives of different people during the colonial ages. Although my major has nothing to do with history, I’ve considered doing other historical research because of the great interest this project has sparked in me. This project has shown me that anyone can truly make a difference.”
At various times in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the state governments of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware hired surveyors to reconfirm their state boundaries. During those surveys, replacement boundary stones were set at some of the mileposts where Mason and Dixon’s original stones had broken or disappeared. In 1952, a granite marker was placed at the site of the Post Marked West. Old family albums and library archives contain photographs of people posing with boundary stones, especially the original stones set by Mason and Dixon. Looking at these photos is like time traveling. In them, you can see some of the ways America has changed: in terms of the countryside, housing, and even fashion and hairstyles.
Here, a whole family, including the dog, poses for their own historic moment at a Mason-Dixon boundary stone.
Despite wearing her Sunday best, this lady seems to have decided that the view — and perhaps the opportunity to stand on a historic monument — was worth the climb.
Hikers, travelers, and anyone with a sense of adventure can visit the stones in person — with homeowner permission for those on privately owned land. Starting in 1990, Todd Babcock and the members of the Mason & Dixon Line Preservation Partnership undertook a mission to locate as many boundary stones as they could and assess their condition. In some ways, the modern hunt for the boundary stones resembled Mason and Dixon’s venture. Like Mason and Dixon, Babcock and his colleagues spoke with landowners as they searched the line. They trekked through fields and woods and occasionally splashed into rivers. In some places, they dug several feet of soil away from buried stones. The condition of the stones varied: some were in very good condition, while others had been chipped and gouged by farm machinery. Time had erased many of the crown stones’ coats of arms, but the detail on a few was still crisp and easy to see. Landowners’ stories led to the whereabouts of some of the seventy stones Mason and Dixon had left near Fort Frederick. As the years passed, local residents had hauled them away and used them for building. One is in a barn wall near Captain Evan Shelby’s old house. Others became part of a house’s walls, a door’s threshold, and a porch step. In 1901, some were set as boundary markers during a confirming survey and maintenance check of the line.
Like a sentinel, crown stone 100, on the West Line, still remains steadfastly in place.
For as long as he can remember, the Mason-Dixon Line has been a part of Craig Babcock’s life. He has spent countless days helping his father, Todd, locate and survey the boundary stones. Often, finding the stones was easier said than done. “I recall one being way back in the woods through swamps and briar bushes,�
�� Craig, now a college student, said. “We had several people looking and we fanned out through the woods to search for the stone, at times walking through mud, water, and even poison ivy. Another time, a stone was buried in a farmer’s field and we had to dig several feet down to find it. Searching for them was memorable because, like in Mason and Dixon’s days, it was an adventure. Digging in dirt and climbing through brush was fun, and finding the stone was a bonus.” After a moment’s reflection, he added, “The point of the trip is to find stones. But the trip isn’t ruined if you don’t. It’s more about the experience of being out there, where Mason and Dixon walked and fought through that same brush you are fighting through. It’s about hearing the stories of the people who live in the area and what their thoughts are, as well as other people who are involved in preserving the stones. Everyone has a story to bring and share, and that’s what makes it exciting — not just saying you found a stone in the ground.”
Craig Babcock’s experience on the line helped him become an Eagle Scout. For his Eagle Scout project, he created his own stone inventory, locating stone mile markers along several highways in Berks County, Pennsylvania. He organized groups of scouts and friends to go out and locate the markers. “We created descriptions, gathered locations, and took pictures of the stones,” he said. “I guess, in that way, I felt that I was doing something beneficial to the community and towards preserving a piece of history.”
As the Babcocks explored the line, they often talked about how the survey was done. And they wondered, Was Mason and Dixon’s line accurate within inches? They and other members of the Preservation Partnership double-checked the surveyors’ accuracy with twenty-first-century technology: a global positioning system (GPS). “The stones that mark the line vary from the starting point by upwards of nine hundred feet,” Todd Babcock said. But he has an explanation for why the surveyors periodically veered off the line: “I attribute this to the variation in gravity along the line, which had an impact on the plumb bob [of the zenith sector]. Gravity varies significantly along the line, and that was something they didn’t fully understand and certainly had no way to correct.” Gravity’s effect depends on elevation, location, the mass of nearby mountains, and even on the density of the rock that underlies an area. The farther you are from the center of the earth (on a mountaintop, for example), the less the pull of gravity. (This was the hypothesis made by the Royal Society and supported by Mason and Dixon’s observations of how the pendulum of Shelton’s clock gained or lost time in John Harlan’s garden.) While Mason and Dixon didn’t climb mountains high enough to noticeably affect their results, the widespread locations where they made their astronomical observations did. “If the zenith sector’s plumb bob were pulled from the vertical by varying amounts gravity along the boundary line, it would affect the readings taken on the zenith sector,” Todd Babcock added. Babcock studied gravity’s variations at Mason and Dixon’s observation spots. He found that their deviations from the line of latitude correlated to the local variations in gravity. Limited by the eighteenth century’s knowledge and understanding of gravity, Mason and Dixon’s work establishing the line was as accurate as scientifically possible. Their work stands as an achievement that truly expanded the scientific boundaries of the eighteenth century. But do the boundaries of the Mason-Dixon Line hold any relevance for us today or for future generations?
One of the milepost markers has been used as part of a concrete step in Pennsylvania.
The story of the Mason-Dixon Line is a tapestry of boundaries: territorial and religious, scientific and cultural, economic and moral. The many boundary journeys found in the complete story of the Mason-Dixon Line are relevant today. They ask us to understand why certain historical events happened. They ask us to examine what happened as the result of these events. They prompt us to question motivations and actions and to recognize similar patterns occurring in our world today.
The Mason-Dixon Line’s story introduces people whose boundary journeys converged in America. Here they created and shaped a country with its own set of boundaries. Although the journey is still tough for some, all individuals in America are guaranteed the freedom to explore, challenge, change, and defend these boundaries. It is the responsibility of all Americans to do so. When we accept this responsibility, we connect with the hopes, ambitions, and lives of those who came before us. We accept the challenge of keeping their dreams alive. In this way, we, like the Mason-Dixon Line, will create a legacy that will affect the lives of future people.
WHOLE BOOKS have been written about some of the participants in the saga of Mason and Dixon’s line, the Calvert and Penn families among them. You can easily find them in libraries. But many of the people (and the instruments!) who played a role in Mason and Dixon’s American adventure have slipped through documentary cracks in the historical record and disappeared. Or perhaps they remain lost in archives, just waiting for an adventure-seeking researcher to find them, like the information recently rediscovered about the Plumstead-Huddle house. However, records that have already come to light offer tantalizing glimpses about what happened to certain people (and instruments) who participated in the survey. Many of these glimpses raise more questions. . . .
CHARLES MASON observed the 1769 transit of Venus, in Ireland, for the Royal Society. (After completing their survey in America, Mason and Dixon did not work together again.) He continued his astronomical work and was highly regarded for creating a set of lunar and solar tables. But he never forgot his time in America. In September 1786, Mason, Mary (his second wife), seven sons, and a daughter immigrated to Philadelphia. Less than two weeks after their arrival, he sent a note to Benjamin Franklin, informing him that he was sick and confined to bed. Sadly, Mason died less than a month later, on October 25, 1786. He is buried in an unmarked grave in Christ Church Burial Ground, not far from the tall steeple he first saw when he entered Philadelphia in 1763. Several Pennsylvania newspapers published his obituary.
JEREMIAH DIXON also observed the 1769 transit of Venus, but in Norway. Afterward, he worked as a surveyor in England. Several years later, he bought a dyehouse, which provided him with additional income. Dixon never married. He died on January 22, 1779, at the age of forty-six. The location of his grave is unknown. In his will, he left the rent and profits of the dyehouse to Margaret Bland, instructing that she use them “for and towards the maintenance, education, and bringing up of her two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth.” The dyehouse was to belong to Mary and Elizabeth when they reached the age of twenty-one. The relationship between Margaret, her daughters, and Jeremiah Dixon is unknown.
MOSES MCCLEAN served as a captain during the Revolutionary War. He became a prisoner of war after being captured by Indians who sided with the British. He remarried after his wife, Sarah — whom Charles Mason had met — died. He and his second wife moved to Ohio. Moses died in 1810.
JOHN HARLAN is reported in the Harlan family genealogy as having drowned in Brandywine Creek. His name ceases to appear in colonial records after 1768.
PHINEHAS HARLAN married his sweetheart, Elizabeth Jones, on September 24, 1766, one year after he worked as an axman on the line.
THOMAS AND HANNAH CRESAP remained loyal Marylanders. By the mid-1740s, Thomas established a fort and trading post along the bank of the Potomac River, in the wilderness of western Maryland, and within a few years built the home Mason and Dixon visited. When George Washington was sixteen years old and participating in a frontier land survey, he spent two nights at the Cresaps’ home. In his journal, Washington wrote that the road to Cresap’s house was “I believe the Worst Road that ever was trod by Man or Beast.” Cresap and his son became land speculators and founded the town of Oldtown. Hannah Cresap died before 1774. Thomas died in 1790; his grave overlooks the Potomac River. Yet his spirit of discovery lives on in the archaeological excavations on the site of Cresap’s fort, where an abundance of eighteenth-century artifacts have been unearthed.
ZENITH SECTOR: Owned by the Penn family, the sector re
mained in Pennsylvania. It was used to observe the 1769 transit of Venus and to survey the boundary between New York and New Jersey. After the Revolutionary War, the sector was housed in different cities, and eventually put on display in the Pennsylvania state capitol building, in Harrisburg. It was reported as destroyed when the building burned in February 1897.
TRANSIT AND EQUAL ALTITUDE INSTRUMENT: For many years, the transit’s whereabouts were unknown. Then, in 1912, it was found in Philadelphia underneath the floorboards in the bell tower of Independence Hall, formerly called the Pennsylvania State House, the building where Mason and Dixon sometimes met with the commissioners. How the instrument got there no one knows. It is on display in a large meeting room in the hall, possibly the same room where Mason and Dixon first unpacked it in 1763.
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