History of the Masonic Order

In 1763-67 Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon interviewed and marked the majority of the limitations between Maryland, Pennsylvania and also the Three Lower Areas that grew to become Delaware. Laptop computer, commissioned through the Penn and Calvert families to stay their lengthy-running boundary dispute, offers an interesting reference within the regions history. This paper summarizes the historic reputation of the boundary dispute, the execution of Mason and Dixons survey, and also the symbolic role from the Mason-Dixon Line in American civil privileges history.

Historic background

British states The United States came from with John Cabot's letters patent from King Henry VII (1496) to understand more about and claim areas for England. ("John Cabot" was really a Venetian named Giovanni Caboto.) Cabot probably sailed past Cape Breton, Quebec, and Newfoundland. He walked ashore just once in The United States, within the summer time of 1497 in an unknown location, to assert the location for England. It's highly unlikely that Cabot came anywhere close to the mid-Chesapeake bay, however.

The very first Men and women look around the Chesapeake Bay within the 1500's were The spanish language people and Jesuit missionaries. But according to Cabot's prior claim, Full Elizabeth I granted Mister Walter Ralegh a land patent in 1584 to determine the very first British colony in the usa. The very first British colonists chosen Roanoke Island within the Outer Banks of New York in 1585 (see colonist John White's map). The majority of the colonists came back to England the year after the rest of the settlers had disappeared when White's re-supply ship finally came back towards the island in 1590.

The Virginia Company based in london, some pot stock venture, established the very first permanent British colony at "James Fort, " also known as Jamestown, in 1607. The fort was erected on the peninsula around the James River. The colony was designed to extract gold in the Indians, or mine for this, also it only made it by switching its economic focus to tobacco (brought to England by John Rolfe), real furs, etc.

John Cruz released his famous Map of Virginia (1612) according to his 1608 search for the Chesapeake. Smith's map includes the "Smyths fales" around the Susquehanna River (the Conowingo dam), "Gunters Harbour" (North East, MD), and "Pergryns mount" (Iron Hill near Newark, P). Observe that the latitude markings towards the top of the map are remarkably accurate.

The Maryland colony

When George Calvert, Englands Secretary of Condition under King James I, openly declared his Catholicism in 1625, British law needed he resign. James granted him an Irish baronetcy, making them the very first The almighty Baltimore. Although Calvert was a trader within the Virginia Company, he was barred from Virginia due to his religion. Then he began their own "Avalon" colony in Newfoundland, however the climate demonstrated inhospitable. So Calvert convinced Jamess successor, Charles I, to allow his family the land north from the Virginia colony that grew to become Maryland.

The 1632 grant gave the Calverts everything north from the Potomac towards the 40th parallel, and in the Atlantic west towards the supply of the Potomac. George Calvert died later in 1632, and the sons began the Maryland colony, named in recognition of Charles Is consort Henrietta Maria On May 27th, 1634, Leonard Calvert contributing to 300 settlers showed up within the Chesapeake Bay at St. Marys. George Alsop released a "Land-skip" map from the new colony (1666).