Retracing Mason and Dixon

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The Brandywine Valley has more historic significance than just the Battle of Brandywine in 1777. It’s also where surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon made the astronomical calculations needed for their namesake Mason-Dixon Line.

Members of the Surveyors Historical Society came to Chester County to honor that fact during their 2013 rendezvous by driving a spike into Star Gazer Road in Newlin Township to mark the spot where Mason and Dixon set up their original observatory.

Everybody takes part
Everybody takes part

This year’s rendezvous was a kickoff to the 250th anniversary of the creation of the line.

“We’re out here today to mark the location of the observatory where Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon started the 15-mile line from the southern-most latitude of Philadelphia down to the west line between Pennsylvania and Maryland,” said Todd Babcock of the society.

While the Mason and Dixon Line is more readily associated with the line separating the Union from the Confederacy during the Civil War, the line was intended to ascertain the the exact border between Pennsylvania and Maryland in order to settle a boundary dispute — dating back to the 1681 — between the Penn and Calvert families, Babcock said. That border was to be 15 miles south of the southern most point in Philadelphia.

The surveyors arrived in Philadelphia in November 1763. At that time, the southern-most point in Philaldephia was at what is now where I-95 crosses South Street. At that time, though, it was called Cedar Street, according to Babcock. But it would have been too difficult to measure from there because they would have had to cross the Delaware River. So, from South Street in Philadelphia they traveled 31 miles west to the Harland House in Newlin Township and set up their camp in January of 1764.

The perambulating waywiser
The perambulating waywiser

That 31-mile distance put Mason and Dixon almost due north of the northeast corner of Maryland where it meets Pennsylvania. Babcock said 15 miles south of the point in Newlin is no more than 3 miles east from the point where Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware meet.

Mason and Dixon set up their astronomical observatory to take their readings on what is now Star Gazer Road, just off Embreeville Road, or state Route 162. In October 1767, the pair finished their 233-mile long line in the area of what is now Wheeling, W.Va.

Members of the society drove a spike into the street in front of the original Harland home, several hundred yards south of the original Stare Gazers stone.

Babcock said the original is actually in the wrong place, that it’s too far north to be the actual site of the observatory.

After driving in the spike, Babcock and others unveiled a smaller version of the stone — of the same Settlers quartzite material — with a plaque commemorating the observatory.

Prior to the ceremony, members of the society displayed exhibits of early surveying equipment and several demonstrated the use of a perambulating waywiser, or walking wheel. The wheel has a known circumference and surveyors would walk the wheel from point to point counting the revolutions to determine the distance between the points.

The plaque
The plaque

About Rich Schwartzman

Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.

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