Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 64, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1915 — MASON-DIXON LINE BEGUN 151 YEARS AGO [ARTICLE]

MASON-DIXON LINE BEGUN 151 YEARS AGO

To Mark th* Boundary Between the States of Pennsylvania and Maryland. Philadelphia, Pa.—ln 1763, two English surveyors, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, began the surveying of what came to be known as the Mason-Dixon Line between the states f Pennsylvania and Maryland. This line afterwards ecame famous as the supposed boundary between the North and the South, or between the free or slave-holding states. The line was surveyed at the instance of William Penn and Lord Baltimore. The surveyors were three years in making the survey from the northeast corner to the foot of Savage Mou: tain. In 1767 the work was finished from the 1: -ter point to Virginia, now West Virginia. The line is said to have cost $300,000/and the surveyors employed an army of 100 axmen, and a road 30 feet wide was cut through the dense forest. A mixture of sand and lime stones of light brown-grayish color was brought over from England to mark the line, and these stones were set up at intervals of a mile wherever it was possible to erect them. They weighed 500 pounds each and were four and one-half feet high. On some parts of the line the country was so rugged that mounds of dirt and rocks had to be substituted for these stones. Today the Mason-Dixon line has been resurveyed and remarked and divested of its chief erroneous traditions. In 1849 a revision of the line was made by a joint commission from Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware, and it was then found that the change involved by the correction amounted to less than two acres, which were added to Maryland. In 1903 Pennsylvania and Maryland each appropriated $5,000 for the restoration of the line. Many of the peculiar English stones had disappeared, and the commission made an exhaustive search for them. The Identification was an easy task, for, on breaking them, the stones emitted a sulphurous odor. So thorough was the search that some were found in the curbing of streets and in people’s cellars. One was taken from the wall of an old stone church, where it had done service for many years. In the places of those that could not be found new stones of marble were set up. On every fifth stone the coat of arms of William Penn was cut on the Pennsylvania side and on the Maryland side the escutcheon of Lord Baltimore was placed. On the others the monogram P. and M. was cut. The stones are now set so near one another, even in the mountain regions, that the traveler may stand at a stone and see the next one.