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Short Stuff: Mason-Dixon Line · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Chuck and there's Jerry. You can hear air conditioning in
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: the background, and this is short stuff. I got this
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: idea just a couple of days ago. Emily and I
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: were watching Jeopardy, as we don't do every night, but
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: we try to make it that appointment viewing. We have
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: a good time watching that show together. Yeah, it's great.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Do you remember the time we were on Jeopardy? I
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: know how about that? Uh, it's funny because my daughter
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: will walk through the room occasionally be like you were
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: on that shows. Um. So it was a question a
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: couple of nights ago or I guess an answer. A
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: clue is what they call them. And it said something
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: about these two gentlemen, and I can't remember exactly how
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: it was worded, um, but something about like surveying, and
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: I was like Lewis and Clark, and it was Mason
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: and Dixon. And being from the South, you always hear
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: about the Mason Dixon line are not always, but it's
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: a enough term to where I was like, wait a minute.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: I was like, Mason and Dixon were people, and I
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: never really thought about it. Of course, they were, but
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: I knew nothing about this at all. So this popped up.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: The House of Works had a pretty actually really good
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: article on it. So, um, here we go and away
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: we go. Because I thought Mason and Dixon were probably
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: politicians of some sort, I had no idea they were
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: the surveyors. You've got to be a pretty amazing surveyor
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: for somebody to name your survey after you, especially when
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: it's the one that's as important as the Mason Dixon line,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: because as we'll see, it's the line that divided the
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: north and the south. But even before that, decades before that,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: it was a really important line that settled the decades
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: long boundary dispute between William Penn and the Pennsylvania Colony
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: and um Lord Baltimore Charles Calvert of the Maryland Colony
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: to the south. And those two were really going at it.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: And the reason they were going at it was because
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Penn was given the land down to the parallel fortieth
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: degree latitude north latitude, and Calvert, Lord Calvert was given
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: the land from I think like the Potomac up to parallel.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: The problem is the earliest maps that map Parallel got
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: it kind of wrong, and Philadelphia by these early maps,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: was in Maryland, about five miles within the Maryland border,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: and William Penn said, that just can't stand. We need Philadelphia.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: It's really important. Yeah, like everyone wanted Philadelphia. One day,
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: those great people will throw batteries at Santa Claus. I
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: forgot about. We need to claim this wonderful city. Don't
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: make this show it's always sunny in Philadelphia. It's gonna
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: be pretty great and last a thousand years. Also, at
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Stake was about four thousand square miles, so it was
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: a lot of land. And this was a dispute for decades,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: and the people of these two areas started to kind
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: to worry that things were getting so heated that they
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: would be like double text on their property, because both
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: places would claim that they're in their part of the world.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: And so finally in seventeen sixty three, the King of
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: England said, all right, I'm gonna get in here. We're
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: gonna commission this survey. I got a couple of crack
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: uh surveyors. Once an astronomer named Charles Mason. One is
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: a surveyor named Jeremiah Dixon. There from England. They've got
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: all this fancy, fancy modern equipment that they're gonna bring along.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: They're gonna need a ton of booze and a lot
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: of people, and it's gonna take years, but we're gonna
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: finally settle this. Yeah. They spent fifty eight months from
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: what I can tell, basically straight through living in tents
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: surveying a two hundred and thirty three mile or three
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: seventy four kilometer stretch, and they settled that boundary dispute.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: And did they ever because even still today, surveyors, modern
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: surveyors who used geosynchron satellites to do their surveying, are
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: in awe of how accurate Mason and Dixon's survey line
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: and their their boundary line work was. That it was
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: just almost precisely dead on because they've gone back, modern
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: surveyors have gone back and recalculated it, and they're like,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: it's basically exactly right. Yeah, And I think some of
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: the techniques they use informed surveying that we still see today.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: So it's it's a pretty cool story. Um, so let's
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: take a break. We'll talk a little bit about that
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: booze and uh, how they accomplished this feat a little
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: more right after this, it's they got drunk a lot, apparently,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: I guess, so I don't want to harp on it,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: but it is pretty funny. One of the footnotes in
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: this article that you sent, Uh, where did that come from?
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: It was good. I will tell you later on okay. Um,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: the supply list from seventeen sixty four, and it's just
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: one of the years had twenty twenty gallons of whiskey,
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: forty gallons of brandy, and eighty gallons of wine. Uh.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: In the end, they were paid about thirty five hundred
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: pounds uh sixteen pounds and nine shillings, which would be
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: about three hundred grand today or about sixty dollars per year.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: But they did a lot of hard work drawing this line.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: It was very meticulous. They had some Native Americans helping
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: them as guide, some Iroquois people. Uh. They had about
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty people in their party, and they,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: like I said, they had sort of the state of
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: the art equipment at the time, which, um, you know,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: I think informed later equipment, but it is pretty pretty
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: cract stuff at the time. Yeah. There's one in particular
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: called a zenith sector and it had a plumb line
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: that ran vertically straight, vertically to the ground, and then
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: it had a telescope that you could, you know, put
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: to different degrees at different angles, and then you had
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: to get on the ground and look up through the
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: telescope to find the star you were looking for. And
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: then you could measure the angle of the star um
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: with the zenith of the sky, the highest point of
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: the sky, and calculate an angle here on Earth. And
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: that's the kind of stuff that they were doing again
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: over fifty eight months. And one of the reasons why
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: the survey was so advanced for its time is that
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: it was the first geodetic survey carried out at least
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: in North America. And geodetic surveys are the ones that
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: are so precise. They calculate the lumps and bumps and
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: um irregular spheroid shape of the Earth into its calculations
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: to make it that precise. That's why it was so precise.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: But again, these guys weren't using satellites and computers. They
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: were using telescopes and plumb lines that they had to
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: get on the ground to look up to find stars with,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: and their noodles to calculate their findings. I wonder if
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: the the King of England's like, we really just needed
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: you to walk left and drop some bird seed. Uh,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: So what happened along the way? They they didn't drop
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: bird seed. This is kind of even more impressive. Is
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: that reference to something dropping bird seed? Well, I mean
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: the old stories of dropping bird seed to find your
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: way back? But yeah, you never heard that? No I haven't.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Is it like the joke is because like the birds
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: would come eat the seed. I think it was probably
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: from some fairy tale. Originally, I don't know. I totally
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: ruined this. I really think we're going to edit this
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: part out because I think I'm just going to leave
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: it as is. It was so beautiful and hilarious, I
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: think we should leave it. Um. So, what they did
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: drop was limestone posts that they brought over from England
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: every mile along the way, and I think it was
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: like two hundred and thirty something miles UH in total,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: as well as an eighty three mile uh north south
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: border between what was Pennsylvania or what is now Delaware
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: what was then Pennsylvania in eastern Maryland. But they dropped
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: these limestone posts along the way, and then every five
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: miles dropped a crown stone, which is a very very heavy,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: like a five to seven hundred pounds stone that they
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: carved a C on one side for calvert and a
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: P on the other side for pen um. Sometimes they
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: even had coat of arms and stuff like that until
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: they got to the Appalachian Mountains and then they were like,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: we can't do these crown stones anymore. We can't carry
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: these up over the mountain. And also it's hilarious they
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: shipped these over from England, like, we're not sure if
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: there's stone in America, so we're just gonna cover all
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: those came from England because I know the posted I
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: think the stones did as well. Okay, yeah, I'm pretty sure,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: which is hilarious but also really unnecessary. Sure, well, I
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: didn't know what was over here. So, like I said,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: the Mason Dixon Line has been recalculated, much to the
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: thrill of modern surveyors. And I think one of the
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: first surveys of the Mason Dixon Line was carried out
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: by the Mason Dixon Line Preservation Partnership, which is adorable
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: because there's surveyors from Pennsylvania and surveyors from Maryland involved
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: in that partnership, and they went around to do an
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: inventory of all of those um milestones and crown stones
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, and they found a lot of them,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: which is really cool. I think they found all but ten. Uh,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: and they reckon just maybe flooding apparently. Uh. In the
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: Civil War they would use them for target practice and
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: stuff like that, or just the Civil War in general
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: destroyed them. But all but ten is not too bad, No,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: it's not so. The Mason Dixon Line was established the
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland and also Delaware and then
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: what would become West Virginia, and that in and of
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: itself was pretty great considering how acurate they were. The
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: reason why it divides the North and the South had
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with Mason and Dixon had to do
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: with the fact that um Maryland was a slave state.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: It was the northernmost slave state, and in eighteen twenty
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: the Missouri Compromise was passed that basically said the slave
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: states are considered in the South, and all the South
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: states are slave states, the North states are free states.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: And that's that. And because Maryland was a slave state,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: it was considered the South, and since it south of
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: the missing Mason Dixon line, the Mason Dixon Line was
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: used to distinguish the North and the South between eighteen
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: twenty on, and that's kind of it. I'm sure Maryland
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: today is like, oh, kind of not really though, Yeah,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: I think most of the South says the same thing too.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: I mean one of the biggest shocks I've ever gotten
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: in my life, but a really dull life, was finding
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: out that Maryland was technically in the South. I had
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: no idea. Yeah, I mean, if you're from Georgia. I
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: even remember growing up thinking Virginia was pushing it right. Um,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: But then I met Virginians and many I think maybe
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: because they're fairly far north geographically on the East Coast,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: uh are sometimes very adamantly Southern. Yeah, they really love
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: horses too. That's pretty southern. And then one other little tidbit,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: so from eighteen twenty to eighteen fifty, when the Fugitive
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Slave Act was passed, Um, if you were enslaved in
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Maryland and you can make it just across the border
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: to Pennsylvania, you were free, amazing, and you would eventually
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: become a Philadelphia Eagles fan. And boo Santa Claus. I
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: don't know if they threw batteries at Santa Claus. They
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: threw batteries at somebody. I feel like it was Santa Claus. Yeah,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: that that shows up in our Black Friday episode if
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: you want to go listen to that one dedicated fans
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: there in Philly. That's all I'll say. Right, And by
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: the way, Chuck, that um the post that we were
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: talking about, it's called the Survey of Mason and Dixon,
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Granddaddy of all titled disputes, and it's hosted on the
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Maryland Bar Association's website that m has be a dot org.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: So look it up. Fantastic and you'll be like, this
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: is great. I love it, Okay, And I guess that's it, right, Chuck.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: I think that means you know what it means. Short
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production
• 12:22
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• 12:25
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• 12:28
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