Just in time as our Summer Storm Gettysburg game is published comes an article suggesting the South may not have technically invaded "the North " at all, or indeed, gotten there sooner than they thought! - Ed. Largely because of the Civil War, the Mason-Dixon line is part of American cultural literacy. It was the line dividing north from south, free from slave, the Union from the Confederacy. Every student in the United States studies the Mason-Dixon Line. But how much do we really know about this famous line or lines? Is there really more than one? Does it go north and south and in circles as well as east and west? In 1632, Lord Baltimore received his grant in the New World from the British King. At the time no one seems to have been much concerned with precise boundaries, but the Maryland grant extended to 40 degrees north latitude and west to "the first fountain of the Potomac". Check a Pennsylvania road map 401 north passes through Philadelphia north of Temple University, through Coatesville, south of Lancaster, north of York - you get the picture. Philadelphia city hall with its statue of Billy Penn would be in Maryland. I wonder how he'd look in an Oriole's cap? Meanwhile, an area on the west coast of the Delaware Bay was settled by Swedish and Dutch immigrants and granted to the Duke of York. In 1680, William Penn received his grant and, two years later, the Duke of York transferred his grant to Penn. Penn's claim now extended south to approximately 38' 27' north latitude. Time to check your Maryland road map. That's south of Cambridge, Md., includes the upper third of the Chesapeake Bay and, extended westward, is more than 20 miles south of Washington, DC. It includes most of the state of Maryland and part of northern Virginia. If you're a collector of obscure geographic places, here's a trip you will want to take. Next time you're on Maryland's eastern shore take Maryland Route 16 West from Cambridge to Taylor's Island. There you'll find a large plaque telling you that this was once the southern boundary of Pennsylvania. One can only imagine the problems and disputes that must have arisen for the nearly 80 years that these overlapping claims existed. Finally, in 1760, a British court set the boundaries of the colonies of Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania. Because of the large overlap in claims the solution was complicated. The line between Pennsylvania and Maryland was set at a line of latitude 15 miles south of the then southern boundary of Philadelphia (approximately 39* 43' 15" north latitude). Near the Delaware River, this line infringed a bit on Delaware territory. The court's solution was to draw a 12 mile radius from the then capital of Delaware, Newcastle, creating a rare circular boundary. The court decision also set the boundary between Delaware and Maryland. Check your Maryland map again. Using the old Penn claim line of 38 ° 27', the court set a point exactly half way between Fenwick Island and Taylor's Island. From there they ran a line north, intersecting the tangent point of the Newcastle circle. This line extended north beyond the tangent point to the Pennsylvania/Mary land border, thus resulting in that approximately one mile jog in the Delaware circle above Newark, Delaware. Not surprisingly, this judicious but complicated solution required skillful surveying to translate these lines to real points on the ground. Three years after the decision, the English government sent Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, noted astronomers and mathematicians, to the Colonies to undertake this difficult task. They began with the easy part, the Newcastle circle and the north/south boundary between Delaware and Maryland. Next they set out to survey what most of us today think of as the Mason- Dixon Line. This proved a difficult task through wooded terrain, across the mile- wide Susquehanna and up and down steep slopes when they reached South Mountain and the ridge and valley province. As they went west they marked each mile with a stone (P on the north side, M on the south side) brought from quarries on the Isle of Portland. Each fifth mile was marked with a crown-stone engraved with the coats-of- arms of the Penn family and that of Lord Baltimore. These stones extended west as far as Sideling Hill and many of them remain in place today. It took Mason and Dixon more than four years to complete their task. Not knowing how far west the "first fountain of the Potomac" was, they continued running this line west until hostile natives stopped them. They returned to England in December 1767, having achieved a remarkable feat for their time, little suspecting that 100 years later their names would become an important part of American history. Much of the information for this article was excerpted from the Geography and Geology of Maryland by Harold E. Volkes and Jonathan Edwards, Jr., revised and printed 1974. Keith Gentzler is the associate directol of DEPs Office for River Basin Cooperation. He can be reached at (717) 772-4785. More information about Pennsylvania's rivers and creeks is available on DEPs website (choose Information by Subject/Office for River Basin Cooperation). Back to Art of War Issue #30 Table of Contents Back to Art of War List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Clash of Arms Games. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com