Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel Bam. Here ask a Southerner where the South begins,
Speaker 1: and you might get answers like where one syllable words
Speaker 1: become two or three, or where the most honored foods
Speaker 1: are grits engravy. In other words, the South should begin
Speaker 1: in Richmond, Virginia, or Lexington, Kentucky, or even Wheeling, West Virginia.
Speaker 1: But the Mason Dixon Line, which has been regarded for
Speaker 1: two hundred years as the transition between the north and
Speaker 1: the South in the United States, turns that conventional sociological
Speaker 1: thinking upside down. The Mason Dixon Line runs between Maryland
Speaker 1: and Pennsylvania and Delaware, which are all three considered northern states.
Speaker 1: So if the Mason Dixon Line really is the dividing
Speaker 1: line between the north and south, why then does it
Speaker 1: put in Maryland in the south. The Mason Dixon Line
Speaker 1: is not some geographical folk paw. It's the result of
Speaker 1: one of the most significant surveying achievements in North America.
Speaker 1: It was named for Charles Mason, and astronomer and Jeremiah Dixon,
Speaker 1: a surveyor who introduced surveying techniques to North America that
Speaker 1: would go on to be used to draw boundary lines
Speaker 1: for western states in the US. We spoke with Todd Babcock,
Speaker 1: a Pennsylvania surveyor and founder of the Mason and Dixon
Speaker 1: Line Preservation Partnership. He said, in many respects, the techniques
Speaker 1: we use today are very similar to those used by
Speaker 1: Mason and Dixon. I used the analogy that Mason and
Speaker 1: Dixon used the constellation of stars to guide them, and
Speaker 1: today we use a constellation of satellites. Mason and Dixon,
Speaker 1: who were English, were hired in seventeen sixty three by
Speaker 1: the King of England to settle a land dispute between
Speaker 1: two aristocratic colonial families then headed by William Penn the
Speaker 1: Second and Charles Calvert. The two families quarreled and fought
Speaker 1: over land for decades. The colonial landowners along the line
Speaker 1: separating the two proprietors land feared being asked to pay
Speaker 1: taxes to both the Pens and the Calverts because both
Speaker 1: families were claiming the same land. So Mason and Dixon
Speaker 1: spent fifty eight months survey being a two hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty three mile that's three seventy four kilometer stretch of
Speaker 1: land from Philadelphia westward. It was mostly wilderness, and they
Speaker 1: established the boundaries of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and what was
Speaker 1: then Virginia and is now West Virginia. It became a
Speaker 1: steadfast boundary. The pens were to the north with Philadelphia
Speaker 1: as their hub, and the calverts to the south with
Speaker 1: Baltimore as their hub. The Mason Dixon line also included
Speaker 1: the eighty three mile that's one hundred and thirty three
Speaker 1: kilometer north south border between what was then Pennsylvania, now
Speaker 1: Delaware and eastern Maryland. The line starts in the southwest
Speaker 1: corner of Delaware and runs north. It was meticulous and
Speaker 1: painstaking work at that time, as the men used the
Speaker 1: stars as guidance to follow a line of latitude. Mason
Speaker 1: and Dixon, with Iroquois guides leading a traveling party of
Speaker 1: about a hundred and twenty axe men, wagon drivers and attendants,
Speaker 1: cut through virgin forest as they went westward. The men
Speaker 1: used in astronomical clock they brought from England to help
Speaker 1: determine the ellipticity of the Earth. Babcock said it added
Speaker 1: to our understanding of the shape of the Earth and
Speaker 1: that it wasn't a perfect sphere, it was bulging in
Speaker 1: the middle, and while Mason and Dixon found that while
Speaker 1: the earth was indeed round, it had undulations. The men
Speaker 1: also used a zenith sector, which is a graduated arc
Speaker 1: of a vertical circle, paired with a telescope and plumb line.
Speaker 1: Their tripod mounted surveying tool, known as a Bird Transit
Speaker 1: after its inventor, John Bird, was thought lost in history's dustbin,
Speaker 1: but was discovered by accident in Philadelphia, restored, and now
Speaker 1: sits an exhibit in Independence Hall. Babcock says the men
Speaker 1: painstakingly placed limestone posts, also brought from England, at each
Speaker 1: mile along the way, while crown stones were set every
Speaker 1: five miles or eight kilometers. These crown stones were carved
Speaker 1: with the letter C on the southern side of the
Speaker 1: rock for Calvert and a P on the northern side
Speaker 1: for Pen. Some stones had the Pen coat of arms
Speaker 1: and others the Calvert coat of arms. Stones were massive
Speaker 1: and weighed as much as five hundred to seven hundred
Speaker 1: pounds that's surround two hundred and twenty to three hundred
Speaker 1: and any kilo's apiece. So when Mason and Dixon and
Speaker 1: the team got to the Appalachian Mountains around Hancock, Maryland.
Speaker 1: They had to stop placing them because they simply weighed
Speaker 1: too much. They used wooden posts the rest of the way.
Speaker 1: They had traveled a hundred and thirty two miles that's
Speaker 1: two hundred and twelve kilometers from Philadelphia in the Mason
Speaker 1: and Dixon Line. Preservation Partnership was formed between a group
Speaker 1: of surveyors from Maryland and a group of surveyors from
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania to conduct an inventory of the original hundred and
Speaker 1: dirty two markers. They found all but ten. Floods the
Speaker 1: Civil War, farmers cutting fields, and people using them for
Speaker 1: target practice had left many of the stones damaged or destroyed.
Speaker 1: But what about This surveying led to the Mason Dixon
Speaker 1: Line becoming the unofficial dividing line between where the North
Speaker 1: ends and the South begins. That's where politics comes in.
Speaker 1: In eighteen twenty, Maryland was the northernmost slave state. Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: was a free state. As part of the Missouri Compromise
Speaker 1: that sought to even out the number of slave states
Speaker 1: and free states, Maryland was relegated added to the South
Speaker 1: because of its practice of slavery. The U. S Congress
Speaker 1: then declared that territories south of the Mason Dixon line
Speaker 1: were slave states, and because the South was holding tight
Speaker 1: to the idea of slavery, Maryland was the South. Slaves
Speaker 1: were free once they stepped into Pennsylvania, at least until
Speaker 1: the Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty. The Mason Dixon
Speaker 1: Line was a boundary and a symbol that still holds weight,
Speaker 1: but it's also an important historical note in the science
Speaker 1: of surveying. Every fence erected between neighbor's yards and pink
Speaker 1: ribbon tied to steel steak is a descendant of the
Speaker 1: work of Mason and Dixon. Today's episode was written by
Speaker 1: Ray Glear and produced by Tyler Plang. For more on
Speaker 1: this and lots of other topics, visit how Stuff works
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