Mason and Dixon

English explorers Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon surveyed the demarcation line between four US States between 1764 and 1768.

Fast Facts:

1. Jeremiah Dixon born: July 27, 1733
2. Charles Mason born: April, 1728
3. Mason was an astronomer, Dixon a surveyor
4. Today, the line forms part of the borders of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia

Brief History

In the 1700s, several of England's American colonies had charters claiming the same lands as their boundaries. To settle this dispute, astronomers Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon were commissioned by the leaders of Pennsylvania and Maryland to survey the boundary between their states, as well as the states of Delaware and Virginia. For four years, the two men traversed the often dense forests of this area, laying down stones which had etched a "P" on the north side for Pennsylvania, and an "M" on the south side for Maryland. Later, their line came to be known as the cultural boundary between the North and the South, and became in the popular imagination, the boundary between the slaves states and the free states prior to the Civil War. Mason and Dixon's travels were fictionalized in Thomas Pynchon's 1997 novel Mason & Dixon.

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