why do they call it the mason dixson line?

Answer 1

The Mason–Dixon Line (or "Mason and Dixon's Line") is a line of demarcation between states in the United States. Properly, the Mason-Dixon line is part of the borders of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, surveyed when they were still British colonies. After Pennsylvania began abolishing slavery within the Commonwealth, in 1781, this line, and the Ohio River, became most of the border between the free and slave states. Popular speech, especially since the Missouri compromise of 1820, uses the Mason-Dixon line symbolically as a supposed cultural boundary between the Northern United States and the Southern United States.

The Mason–Dixon line was surveyed between 1763 and 1767 in the resolution of a border dispute in colonial North America. Maryland and Pennsylvania both claimed the land between the 39th and 40th parallels according to the charters granted to each colony. In the meantime, 'Three Lower Counties' along Delaware Bay moved into the Penn sphere of settlement, and later became the Delaware Colony, a satellite of Pennsylvania.

In 1732, Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore signed an agreement with William Penn's sons which drew a line somewhere in between, and also renounced the Calvert claim to Delaware. Lord Baltimore later claimed that the document he signed did not contain the terms he had agreed to, and refused to put the agreement into effect. Beginning in the mid-1730s, violence erupted between settlers claiming various loyalties to Maryland and Pennsylvania.

The issue was not finally resolved until the Crown intervened in 1760, ordering Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimore to accept the 1732 agreement. As part of the dispute's settlement, the Penns and Calverts commissioned the English team of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon to survey the newly established boundaries between the Province of Pennsylvania, the Province of Maryland, Delaware Colony and parts of Colony and Old Dominion of Virginia.

Answer 2

Alhough the Mason-Dixon line is most commonly associated with the division between the northern and southern (free and slave, respectively) states during the 1800s and American Civil War-era, the line was delineated in the mid-1700s to settle a property dispute. The two surveyors who mapped the line, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, will always be known for their famous boundary.
In 1632, King Charles I of England gave the first Lord Baltimore, George Calvert, the colony of Maryland. Fifty years later, in 1682, King Charles II gave William Penn the territory to the north, which later became Pennsylvania. A year later, Charles II gave Penn land on the Delmarva Peninsula (the peninsula that includes the eastern portion of modern Maryland and all of Delaware).

The description of the boundaries in the grants to Calvert and Penn did not match and there was a great deal of confusion as to where the boundary (supposedly along 40 degrees north) lay. The Calvert and Penn families took the matter to the British court and England's chief justice declared in 1750 that the boundary between southern Pennsylvania and northern Maryland should lie 15 miles south of Philadelphia. A decade later, the two families agreed on the compromise and set out to have the new boundary surveyed. Unfortunately, colonial surveyors were no match for the difficult job and two experts from England had to be recruited.

Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon arrived in Philadelphia in November 1763. Mason was an astronomer who had worked at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich and Dixon was a renowned surveyor. The two had worked together as a team prior to their assignment to the colonies.

After arriving in Philadelphia, their first task was to determine the exact absolute location of Philadelphia. From there, they began to survey the north-south line that divided the Delmarva Peninsula into the Calvert and Penn properties. Only after the Delmarva portion of the line had been completed did the duo move to mark the east-west running line between Pennsylvania and Maryland.

They precisely established the point fifteen miles south of Philadelphia and since the beginning of their line was west of Philadelphia, they had to begin their measurement to the east of the beginning of their line. They erected a limestone benchmark at their point of origin.

Answer 3

The Mason–Dixon Line (or "Mason and Dixon's Line") is a line of demarcation between states in the United States. Properly, the Mason-Dixon line is part of the borders of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, surveyed when they were still British colonies. After Pennsylvania began abolishing slavery within the Commonwealth, in 1781, this line, and the Ohio River, became most of the border between the free and slave states. Popular speech, especially since the Missouri compromise of 1820, uses the Mason-Dixon line symbolically as a supposed cultural boundary between the Northern United States and the Southern United States.

More at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mason_dixon_line

Answer 4

The Mason–Dixon line was surveyed between 1763 and 1767 in the resolution of a border dispute in colonial North America. Maryland and Pennsylvania both claimed the land between the 39th and 40th parallels according to the charters granted to each colony. In the meantime, 'Three Lower Counties' along Delaware Bay moved into the Penn sphere of settlement, and later became the Delaware Colony, a satellite of Pennsylvania

Answer 5

There was a dispute about property ownership between the states along the "Mason-Dixon" line. The two British men brought in by the disputants were astronomer Charles Mason and surveyor Jeremiah Dixon, Thus the MASON-DIXON Line.

Answer 6

The Mason-Dixon line (part of the border, or demarcation line, between the North and the South) is named after Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, two English land surveyors. For more information, please refer to "www.wikipedia.org", a very good online encyclopedia.
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Answer 7

The Mason-Dixon line changed into interested in separate Pennsylvania from Maryland. Mason and Dixon were the surveyors depended on with this job. even as pertaining to "The South", Maryland changed into regarded as a Southern State. South of the Mason-Dixon Line changed into "Southern" and changed into shortened to "South of Dixie," and later shortened to in ordinary words "Dixie." And from that, we get Crackers.

Answer 8

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