![]() ![]() He chose to use the names of trees for the cross streets because Pennsylvania means “Penn’s Woods”.īut in his defense, the map he was using was inaccurate, and this threw everything out of whack. The streets are named with numbers and tree names. Philadelphia was planned out to be grid-like with its streets and be very easy to navigate, unlike London where Penn was from. Under his direction, the city of Philadelphia was planned and developed. He was an early advocate of democracy and religious freedom, notable for his good relations and successful treaties with the Lenape Native Americans. William Penn was a writer, early member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and founder of the English North American colony the Province of Pennsylvania. However, even kings can make mistakes, and when Charles II granted William Penn a charter for land in America, he gave him territory that he had already granted to both Maryland and Delaware! What an idiot!? In the early days of British colonialism in North America, land was granted to individuals or corporations via charters, which were given by the king himself. ![]() After this, both the name and its understood meaning became more widespread, and it eventually became part of the border between the seceded Confederate States of America and Union Territories. ![]() It was used to reference the boundary between states where slavery was legal and states where it was not. Instead, it got this name during the Missouri Compromise, which was agreed to in 1820. The line was not called the Mason-Dixon Line when it was first drawn. “A Plan of the West-Line or Parallel of Latitude” by Charles Mason, 1768. Although the war in America had concluded some two years earlier, there remained considerable tension between the settlers and their native neighbours. Mason and Dixon arrived in Philadelphia on 15 November 1763. Noted as a “meticulous observer of nature and geography” he later became a fellow of the Royal Society. At the age of 28 he was taken on by the Royal Observatory in Greenwich as an assistant. Mason’s early life was more sedate by comparison. He enjoyed socialising and carousing and was actually expelled from the Quakers for his drinking and keeping loose company. He was a bit of a lad by all accounts, not your typical Quaker, and never married. He went down to London to be taken on by the Royal Society, just at a time when his social life was getting a bit out of hand. He showed a talent early on for maths and then surveying. Jeremiah was a Quaker and from a mining family. It is called the Mason and Dixon Line because the two men who originally surveyed the line and got the governments of Delaware, Pennsylvania and Maryland to agree, were named Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon. Take a look at the map below to see exactly where the Mason Dixon Line is: Why Is it Called the Mason-Dixon Line? Mason and Dixon resurveyed the Delaware tangent line and the Newcastle arc and in 1765 began running the east-west line from the tangent point, at approximately 39☄3′ N.įor the rest of us, it’s the border between Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Virginia. The Pennsylvania–Maryland border was defined as the line of latitude 15 miles (24 km) south of the southernmost house in Philadelphia. READ MORE: The History of Slavery: America’s Black Mark Where is the Mason-Dixon Line?įor the cartographers in the room, the Mason and Dixon Line is an east-west line located at 39✤3’20” N starting south of Philadelphia and east of the Delaware River. Over time, the line was extended to the Ohio River to make up the entire southern border of Pennsylvania.īut it also took on additional significance when it became the unofficial border between the North and the South, and perhaps more importantly, between states where slavery was allowed and states where slavery had been abolished. The Mason-Dixon Line also called the Mason and Dixon Line is a boundary line that makes up the border between Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. The name comes from the astronomical observations they made there. The “Stargazer’s Stone.” Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon used this as a base point while plotting the Mason and Dixon line. ![]()
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