border disputes are as old as mankind and one of the most famous disagreements happened
between maryland pennsylvania delaware and virginia resulting in a land survey that
i'm quite sure you've come across in pop culture the mason dixon line what was this line how did
it work in practice and where is it now today we discover the story of the mason dixon line
i'm your host ryan socas and you're watching it's history
let's start off by introducing the parties involved in the dispute
first we have the romantically named state of maryland wait romantic you say well let me explain
english king charles the first named this entire colonial charter in honor of his wife with sir
george calvert the first baron of baltimore at the helm in 1632 the land was initially purchased from
the local indian tribes and the first established town was of course saint mary's interestingly
maryland was mostly roman catholic which was rare among the 13 colonies in the early days the colony
of maryland primarily made its income as a tobacco producer exploiting the enslaved in the process
another state that plays into this conflict was the rainy state of pennsylvania well rainy as we
might recall it from the song it always reigns in philadelphia the state was established when
a quaker pacifist william penn was granted a charter from king charles ii william quickly
founded the city of brotherly love philadelphia now we might associate philadelphia with rocky or
cheesesteaks but william penn was mostly focused on and pretty pissed off about border overlaps
basically even though pennsylvania was set around the 40th parallel its land overlapped with
baltimore's land around the chesapeake bay so the third lord of baltimore charles calvert and penn
met in may of 1683 in newcastle and things just escalated with what most assumed as a red line
issue being accessed to the chesapeake bay at the same time calvert insisted that lands in delaware
bay were included in the original 1632 charter from maryland so penn embraced the american way
and took the whole dispute to court funny enough the nearest competing court was in england and
they decided that lord baltimore didn't have a claim because the maryland charter was only
for uncultivated land and christians had already occupied south pennsylvania before said charter
lord baltimore did not like the decision so the court decided to help the two of them work things
out they proposed a compromise of splitting land between chesapeake bay with a straight
line dividing the contested territory in half the line would start at cape henlopen and move along
the south of the 40th parallel the final player we need to talk about in this conflict is delaware
you see the ever-growing city of philadelphia which is the most southern pennsylvanian city
had its borders pushing further and further into lord baltimore's land resulting in yet another
border conflict the new case was issued into court and now the line was moved to 15 miles from the
most southern philadelphian districts but this was only a temporary solution baron baltimore quickly
changed his mind and claimed that the document he signed did not agree on actual terms and then
another conflict started but this one ended in violence the conflict known as crisps war started
as border friction that escalated into open hatred believe it or not it all started with a
ferry let me explain quaker john wright opened his ad hoc passenger ferry on the susquehanna river in
1730 wright got his official ferry license and could carry people from maryland to pennsylvania
and the other way around but this whole ferry business didn't come to the particular liking
of one marylander named thomas chrissapp who was another fairy man that opened a connection just
four miles from rights so in october of 1730 chris app was attacked on his ferry by two
pennsylvanians chrissepp barely escaped with his life and even though his worker was the target
of the attack chris app decided to take care of the aggressor from pennsylvania so we took them
to court and when that didn't bring results he decided to take matters into his own hands
he denounced working with pennsylvanian authorities and even claimed that they worked
with the attackers and native americans to drive him and his business away then pennsylvanians came
for chris f and the frustrated people of maryland retaliated and so on and so on the situation got
so ugly that maryland needed to move its militia up north to secure the regions of conflict
naturally pennsylvania did the exact same thing with that in mind it's probably easy to predict
that by 1737 more formal material parts of this conflict began chris app who was now captain of
a militia was raiding pennsylvania with his gang and had no regrets pennsylvanians tried to arrest
him many times and eventually they succeeded they paraded him through the streets of philadelphia as
he dared to exclaim damn it this is one of the prettiest cities in maryland after his arrest
king george ii intervened and both colonies were forced to sign a peace treaty the border line
was set 15 miles south of philadelphia and both sides exchanged prisoners because the blue rocks
ferry was north of the border thomas chrissepp never returned in 1750 chancery court upheld the
validity of the 1732 agreement and it was the basis for mason and dixon to survey the famous
mason-dixon line in 1767. the surveying was done by a british team of an astronomer charles mason
and a surveyor jeremiah dixon the cost of this survey came to an astonishing 3 512 pounds or
the equivalent of 620 000 dollars today the team needed to survey 244 miles of land with high
accuracy and the whole process took four years surprisingly the survey left a small wedge of land
in dispute between delaware and pennsylvania all the way until 1921. in 1765 mason and dixon began
their survey of the maryland pennsylvania line they were commissioned to run it for a distance
of five degrees longitude of the delaware river they ran it for 244 miles until they stumbled into
hostile territory the duo temporarily quit but returned to finish the survey on october 11th the
team made their final observations which were 230 miles from the starting point in 1779 virginia and
pennsylvania agreed for the line to be stretched west so that they could create an undisputed
border between the two states so in 1784 two teams of surveyors made a borderline between
the southwest corner of pennsylvania and then west of the ohio river this line would prove to be very
symbolic to the united states of america in the coming years after pennsylvania abolished slavery
in 1781 the mason-dixon line became the unofficial line between the southern slavery states and
freedom of northern states with delaware retaining slavery until the 13th amendment
in 1865. curiously the mason-dixon line itself had been re-surveyed three more times in 1849 1900 and
in the 1960s on october the 14th 1963 during the bicentennial of the mason-dixon line u.s
president john f kennedy opened a newly completed section of interstate 95 that crossed the maryland
delaware border and a sad fact about this is that it was one of kennedy's very last appearances
before his assassination in dallas just 39 days later accordingly this section of 95 is known as
john f kennedy memorial highway so now it's time to have a look at what remains of the border today
the border was marked with stones brought from england at every mile there was a stone marking
and every five miles was a special crown stone the stones had a special carving of
an m to symbolize maryland and a pea cut for the delaware and pennsylvania sides in addition to
it every single crown stone had a coat of arms engraved on the corresponding side of the stone
many stones still stand where they were set even though after other surveys many of these stones
turned out to be miles away from the newer and actual line but they still stand there timelessly
i actually had an occasion to visit some of the remaining crown stones of the mason-dixon line
on my other channel cult america so be sure to check out that video when we got done with this
it's hard to believe that an american border dispute nearly turned into a small scale war
leading to a line that would also come to define the division between freedom and slavery you'd
never expect that a survey could be so famous that it would become prevalent in popular culture
rocky's opponent was called mason dixon the line basically became a character in the cartoon
southern fried rabbit where bugs bunny crosses it several times journeying from north to the south
and then the other way around w dixon mason is also the name of a character in the novel people's
choice by jeff greenfield and perhaps what has impacted me the most was british guitarist and
songwriter mark nolfler and his album sailing to philadelphia which basically laid out the entire
story of the survey in moving and poetic terms now for those of you who would like to see this
remarkable line and discover some of the forgotten markers you can hike the mason-dixon line trail
where over the course of 199 miles there are plenty of opportunities to piece it all together
what's left is not much bigger than a toaster and often these markers are chipped
covered in moss or just destroyed by the elements however i'd argue that their state
of decay is what presents you with the physical reality of time making the mason dixon line just
that much more mysterious so don't forget to check out my journey to the mason dixon line
over on cult america and subscribe to its history this is ryan silkesh signing off