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The Mason-Dixon line came to be And it was pretty darn messy. Here to tell the story of Dakota Bricker. who hosts the YouTube channel What in the History? Let's take a listen. Yeah.
No other borderline in the United States ever marked so much division. than the Mason and Dixon line. The figure of the divide between the North and the South during the American Civil War, the Mason and Dixon line would be world famous. for being the separation between one idea of freedom And another. But before the famous border line between the states of Maryland and Pennsylvania gained this recognition, it was the center of a divide between two powerful families within the court of the British royals.
The story of the Mason-Dixon line. does not begin with the Civil War. It begins with a mapping mistake. continued with bloodshed of a border war. finished with a possible deceitful agreement, and finally put to bed through a ruling by the King of England himself.
Uh To start the story of the Mason-Dixon line, we have to go the whole way back to 1608, over 250 years before. the American Civil War. And we have to talk about Captain John Smith. Captain John Smith being of Pocahontas fame, if you ever watched any Disney movies. Captain John Smith actually traveled through the areas around the Chesapeake Bay surveying the lands around Virginia.
And in 1613, Jolen Smith actually created a map and he published it, and he put in place the location of the 40th degree parallel latitude. on his map in relation to the lands around the Chesapeake Bay and Virginia. Smith's map was used by the English kings to give land grants to his people.
So in sixteen thirty two King Charles I, who was the king of England at the time, granted Lord Baltimore, also known as the Family of Calverts, they were granted the uncultivated land lying under the fortieth degree parallel, and north of the Potomac River from the Delaware Bay. As the proprietor of Maryland, the Calvert family, they would sell this land and collect taxes to continue to build their royal estates.
Now in 1681, for services rendered by his father for the British crown, William Penn was granted by King Charles II, who was the king of England at that time. And he was granted land west of the Delaware River, limited on the south by the beginning of the 40th degree parallel.
Now, as the proprietor of Pennsylvania, William Penn, who was a commoner but very influential in the royal court, would also sell land off and he would collect what was called quiet rent to help pay for his province and his lifestyle as well. But in 1682, it was discovered that Captain John Smith's map marking the fort degree parallel was wrong. What he marks as the 40th degree parallel was roughly 19 miles further south than the actual 40th degree parallel. Which made William Penn's land grant completely and utterly nonsensical. And that, of course, also put the majority of Philadelphia, which was Penn's planned capital, in the province of Maryland.
Since Smith was wrong, Penn technically lost millions of acres, including his capital city. And Merilyn claimed it all.
So King Charles II dies and James, which is his brother and also the Duke of York, becomes King James II. And King James wanted to fix the Delaware problem since he had a stake in it, of course. and also the issue of the 40th degree parallel.
So King James referred this problem to the Board of Trade and Foreign Plantations, who made their decision in November of 1685. They agreed that the land granted to Lord Baltimore, according to his grant, was for uncultivated land only, and land that's only inhabited by savages, not by Christians.
So, because the Christians, aka the Dutch, inhabited and cultivated Delaware before the grant. He had no claim.
So the decision of 1685 was that the land from the Delaware Bay to the Chesapeake Bay was to be divided in half by drawing a horizontal line at the latitude of Cape Henlopen from the Delaware Bay to the Chesapeake Bay. Then they would divide that line in half, and at that half point they would run a line tangent to the 12 mile circle around Newcastle and run up to the actual 40th degree latitude, not the incorrect one of John Smith's map. The land east of that line would be James II's, to do with as he wished, such as lease it to his friend William Penn. and the land west would belong to Charles Calvert, the third Baron of Baltimore. The idea was Maryland would lose Delaware.
but would gain land in Pennsylvania. Also, with this deal, Philadelphia would still belong to William Penn in Pennsylvania. And a decision like this, where everybody wins, should be good, right? Roll. This all sounded good until the new problem arose, which was called the Glorious Revolution.
In 1688, King James II was removed from his throne and replaced by William and Mary. This caused political turmoil in England.
So new lines were marked. and Penn and Calvert were selling land to people in the same plot of ground. not knowing who owned what and didn't pay attention to anything that the 1685 decision said.
So, in the land between the fortieth degree parallel. and Smith's incorrect fortieth degree parallel People didn't know which colony they actually belonged to, and thus, which colony do you pay taxes to?
So when a Maryland tax collector came, The landowner would claim that he was from Pennsylvania, and then he'd throw the Maryland tax collector out because he said he pays Pennsylvania taxes. But then, when a Pennsylvania tax collector shows up, the same landowner throws the Pennsylvania tax collector out and tells him. I belong to Maryland. I pay taxes to Maryland.
So in the end, Nobody really paid any taxes. which is a problem for the proprietors of the two colonies. Thomas Cressop, he was a land agent from Maryland and he was claiming and selling land for the Calvert family above John Smith's incorrect 40th degree parallel. And he was selling all this for Lord Baltimore, of course. and in October of seventeen thirty, while operating his ferry across the Susquehanna River, Cressop was involved in an altercation with Pennsylvanians Where guns were drawn, and he was forced to defend himself with his oar and his fists.
Cressop escaped. by leaping off of his ferry and swimming to shore. Unsatisfied with the judges of Pennsylvania prosecuting his attackers, Cressup filed a suit. In Maryland. and refused to follow Pennsylvania law.
Thinking that Pennsylvania was conspiring against him, and he became a hardcore Marylander at that point. Cressophy became an absolute pain to Pennsylvania as he continued to claim and sell land in this disputed area between the fake 40th degree parallel and the actual 40th degree parallel. He was selling this land for Maryland. But the land was claimed by Pennsylvania. and Maryland.
So he actually sometimes would force Pennsylvania grant holders off of their own property. And of course this started a whole chain of events with a border award. And you've been listening to Dakota Bricker tell one heck of a story about the Mason-Dixon line. You know, if you've ever had any property surveyed in your life, you know how dicey a land dispute can get in a 20-acre development. But imagine having a surveying line off by miles and miles.
You're talking about tens of thousands, if not more, acres in dispute. And well, the Crown thought it had a settlement. It divided it up. Delaware got its piece. Pennsylvania got its, Maryland got its.
But then came time for the tax collector. And boy, things got even dicier. And when we come back. More of the Mason-Dixon line, the story behind the story here. and our American stories.
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And we continue with Our American Stories with Dakota Bricker. who hosts the YouTube channel What in the History? Let's pick up where we last left off. William Penn died in seventeen eighteen, and he passed his province on to his sons. the Penn Brothers, and uh they got control of Pennsylvania.
Uh Charles Calvert, the third Baron of Baltimore, died in 1715, and he passed his province of Maryland on to his grandson, whose name was Charles also. Charles Calvert. Fifth, Baron of Baltimore. And in 1731, Charles, the 5th Baron of Baltimore, petitioned King George II, who was the King of England at the time. and he petitioned him to order the proprietors of Pennsylvania to meet with Lord Baltimore to solve the border dispute once and for all.
The king ordered them. to come to an agreement within a year. where the king himself would issue orders to solve the border dispute. Within the month The Penn brothers and Lord Baltimore met to discuss the border. During the discussion, it was decided to use a map.
to draw the border lines. And the map chosen to be used was one that Lord Baltimore happened to pull out of his pocket. And apparently unknown to Baltimore, this map was incorrect, because the Cape Henlupin marked on that map was actually 15 miles south of its actual location. fifteen miles south of the most southern point, of Philadelphia. which put it close to the John Smith Fulse fortieth degree parallel.
So Lord Bouldermore, after realizing the mistake, protested the mistake and refused to accept the agreement, and he claimed deception on the Pen's part. It is lost to history if the Pens actively deceived Baltimore or if this was just a blunder on Lord Baltimore's part. Nobody knows. Maybe they got him drunk. Between seventeen thirty two and seventeen thirty six, Thomas Cressop became the main antagonist against Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania land claim owners.
as he threatened lives. Burn down property. And bullied Pennsylvanians living between the actual fortieth degree parallel. And the John Smith. False fortieth degree parallel.
and he was bullying them because they were Pennsylvanians settling on what he considered Maryland land. In fact, Cressop claimed his own land That he was granted by the Calverts in the Zoon, he actually claimed it by building his house within feet. Of the Pennsylvanian who occupied the same land on a Pennsylvania grant.
So this became such a problem it was called the Cressop War. And in seventeen thirty six the sheriff of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, led a posse of twenty four men to Cressop's home on the opposite side of the Susquehanna River, and they actually were coming to capture what was called the Maryland Monster. The sheriffs actually set fire to Cressup's home, offering to put it out if Cressup would surrender. Cressop would not surrender, but he and his men, and his very pregnant wife, by the way, would start shooting at the posse. as the house burned down around them.
He even positioned his own children in the windows so the lawmen wouldn't shoot through the openings and his wife went into labor during the battle.
Okay. As the floor was about to cave in, Cressop and his men ran from the house while firing at their attackers. Pressup was wounded and apprehended and taken to a jail in Philadelphia. While being paraded through the streets of Philadelphia below the actual 40th degree parallel, the prisoner would cry out, Damn it, this is one of the prettiest towns in Maryland.
So due to all the violence and the border dispute that was erupting in the 1730s, with Cressop being the main antagonist, there was others involved too. But this led to the creation of a temporary line. The king actually ordered on May the 25th, 1738, that a temporary line would be run. 15 and a quarter miles south of Philadelphia on the east side of the Susquehanna River, and 14 and 3 quarter miles south of Philadelphia on the west side. of the Susquehanna until the boundary of the two colonies would be permanently fixed, and this was actually relatively close to the current line.
In a suit filed in English court, By the Penn brothers in 1735 against Lord Baltimore. They tried to force Lord Baltimore to adhere to the 1732 agreement that he signed, but refused to follow because of the incorrect map. and terms that he did not agree with, but he signed anyhow. 15 years after they filed a suit, which would bring us to 1750, Lord Hardwick of England presented a verdict in the suit. which was as follows The agreement of 1732 had to be carried out.
Delaware's southern border would be determined by the false Cape Henleupen. designated on the map that was incorrect when the agreement was done. And the pens made out like bandits. Charles Calvert. died in seventeen fifty one.
The province of Maryland went to his son, Frederick Calvert, sixth Lord Baltimore.
Now Frederick Calvert had no interest in Maryland like his father did. but he only wanted it for one use. As a source of income for his exotic lifestyle, which included. Leisurely writing. Harems of women on multiple continents.
drug use, and turning his large estates into a Turkish palace. Frederick Calvert fought against the 1750 decision with hopes of undoing his father's mistakes and gaining more land that he could sell to sustain his lavish life. In seventeen sixty, The British court upheld the 1750 decision and then, with a royal decree by the king himself, resulted in a new agreement signed on July 4th, 1760, that upheld the 1732 agreement. And it was required that the provinces of Pennsylvania and Maryland would pay to have the line surveyed between their two provinces.
So enter Charles Mason in Jeremiah Dixon. Due to the difficulty of running the tangent line along the western border of Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania hired two mathematicians named Charles Mason. And Jeremiah Dixon, and in 1763, they were assigned to assist with the border survey. Mason and Dixon were astronomers who were world-renowned for their observations to help pinpoint longitudinal locations. Yeah, I think it's a good idea.
This method was the most accurate way to survey a long distance borderline at the time and was used up until the creation of modern GPS technology.
So, this method was used to survey the entire line from the false Cape Henloopen in southern Delaware to Indian Country in western Pennsylvania. They were forced to turn around. once their Indian gods would not cross into enemy Indian territory.
Okay. Now in seventeen sixty seven, which was the tail end of their survey and everything, they had to mark the line.
So they had wooden stakes everywhere, but they didn't have a a hard line marker.
So they set stones at every mile, marking the border so it could no longer become an issue. These stones were actually not from America. They were made in England, in English quarries. And the milestones had a P for Pennsylvania on one side and an M for Maryland on the other. The five mile markers had the family crest of Pen on one side and the royal family crest on the other.
And so thus these markers every five miles became known as crown stones. The Mason-Dixon line has a very colorful and confusing story that spanned decades and generations. A story that goes way beyond. what you may have been taught in high school or college. Over the division of the Civil War, Is what is usually thought of when we think of the Mason and Dixon line.
That generalization masks the true enlightening story of palace intrigue and war. A wire pays. To dig deeper, Into the subject rather than just disregard hearing it in a country salt. or reading it in a textbook. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Craig Hengler.
and a special thanks to Dakota Bricker. hosts the YouTube channel What in the History? And please go to YouTube and check out his work. It's terrific. And what a story he told about the Mason-Dixon line.
I knew nothing about this. And my goodness, these disputes. These were battles. These were many wars. And then ultimately, in comes the king.
To settle things out, he wants to draw a temporary line and get these parties to agree. or King George II will do it for them. But of course King George dies. And the battle goes on until finally Maryland and Pennsylvania are Hire a couple of Crackerjack surveyors. State-of-the-art surveyors, astronomers, indeed, Mason and Dixon.
to settle the border. and the border dispute. once and for all The story of America's most famous dividing line. Between North and South, in America's greatest and worst tragedy, the Civil War. Here on Our American Stories.
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The bed is rocking and the crowd lick. Chants echo. Drum beating. Everybody showing that school pride. Game like this?
Yeah, it calls for an ice cold Coca-Cola. Ah, crisp and refreshing. That's a game changer right there. Mmm, yeah. That taste always hits the right note, just like a band at halftime.
And just like that, we're back at it. Passionate fans, school colors everywhere, and an ice cold Coca-Cola, that's a winning combo. No matter the sport, no matter the yard, everybody knows. Fan work is thirsty work, so grab a Coca-Cola and keep that HBCU pride going. This is an iHeart podcast.
Yeah. Okay.
