Englishmen Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon are memorialized in the Mason-Dixon Historical Park, which is located off Buckeye Road in rural Monongalia County, W.Va.
Mason and Dixon were the surveyors of America’s famous Mason-Dixon Line. The late Kathryn DeVan Kemp, a freelance writer and historian, termed the effort by Mason and Dixon as America’s “most famous border.
The 295-acre Mason-Dixon park encompasses the landmarks of Dunkard Creek and Brown’s Hill. This is the area where Mason and Dixon took their final measurements to establish the boundary line between Pennsylvania and Virginia.
The surveyors were well
beyond Maryland’s western boundary when they forced to shut down their project in
October 1767. Native American guides who were accompanying Mason and Dixon on
their journey said it was too dangerous to attempt to go any farther toward the
west, as war parties from the Shawnee and Delaware tribes were known to be
active in the area.
In 1767, Dunkard Creek
and Brown’s Hill were part of the Virginia colony.
After the American Revolution, surveyors David Rittenhouse and Andrew Ellicott and their crew completed the missing link of the Mason-Dixon Line in 1784. They marked the boundary west of Brown’s Hill to the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, a distance of 22 miles.
Rittenhouse was in his early 50s and serving as treasurer of Pennsylvania at the time, while Ellicott was a young but accomplished surveyor and astronomer who was barely past 30 years of age.
After completing their work on the Mason-Dixon Line, both Rittenhouse and Ellicott developed relationships with President George Washington and other members of the “Founding Fathers” fraternity.
In 1792, Rittenhouse was selected by Washington to become the first director of the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. Rittenhouse hand-struck the first coins that were made from flatware owned by Washington.
Washington commissioned Ellicott in 1790 to survey the boundary of the newly established federal territory on the Potomac River that became the District of Columbia. Ellicott’s survey team included his friend and neighbor Benjamin Banneker, a self-taught African-American surveyor.
The team laid the boundary stones of the 100-square mile borders of the District. Ellicott also completed and revised the original city plan of Pierre Charles L’Enfant.
Fast forward to the Civil War years, and the “birth” of West Virginia.
Virginia’s state convention delegates voted to April 17, 1861, after war broke out at Fort Sumter in Charleston, S.C., to secede from the union. The margin was 88 to 55.
However, there remained a sizeable bloc of union loyalists in Virginia, and representatives from 39 Virginia counties, mostly in the far northwestern counties of the state, met Oct. 24, 1861, voted “to secede from Virginia” and seek to form a new state.
At first, it looked like “Kanawha”
was going to become the name of the new state (the Kanawha River runs through
Charleston and joins the Ohio River at Point Pleasant).
One delegate attending the constitutional convention on Dec. 3, 1861, said he thought folks would have trouble pronouncing the word – “kuh-NOW-wha” or “kah-NO-wah”? The delegates agreed to “open the floor” for other suggestions.
Mentioned were Allegheny, Augusta, Columbia, New Virginia, Vandalia, West Virginia and Western Virginia.
Upon the roll call, 30 of the 44 delegates voted for “West Virginia.”
Eleven more counties from Virginia signed up to join, and West Virginia was fast-tracked for statehood by President Abraham Lincoln. West Virginia officially became a state on June 20, 1863.
It has two “panhandles”
that are worth exploring.
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