The survey began with a Maryland-Pennsylvania border dispute
A hand-drawn chart of the Mason-Dixon Line is scheduled to go on sale Thursday in a livestreamed auction. The map has been remounted on backing made of Japanese rice paper, and Lauren Brunk, vice president of Brunk Auctions in Asheville, North Carolina, estimates that it could fetch $800,000 to $1.2 million for the anonymous seller.
The map’s importance comes from its later connection to slavery and sectional division. Brunk said, “It’s not that often that you can really get this close to something that is so historically important,” and added, “And it was awe-inspiring, really.”
The survey by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon was originally meant to settle a border dispute between the then-colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania. Its original purpose differed from the later role of the boundary in the history of free and slave states.
Brunk said, “The Mason-Dixon Line that most Americans know is this dividing line between the northern free states and the southern slaveholding states,” adding, “But the line was not drawn for that reason.” The 1820 Missouri Compromise used the line to establish the limits of human bondage in the United States. The Associated Press reported that the line became synonymous with “the fundamental divisions that exploded into civil war” four decades later.
A popular theory holds that the term “Dixie” comes from Dixon, though the true origin is disputed.
The map’s linen-backed strip of paper measures 76 inches (193 centimeters) long and 6.5 inches (16.5 centimeters) tall. Soon after the line was drawn, the document was given to the family of attorney Benjamin Chew, who represented the descendants of Pennsylvania founder William Penn.
The map remained in Chew’s family’s hands until 1982, when late publisher Malcolm S. Forbes outbid the Library of Congress and bought it for $360,000, Brunk said. At the time, it was said to have been the highest price ever paid at auction for an American map.
The map changed hands again in 2002. A vertical section showing the Delaware-Maryland border is housed at Princeton University.
Brunk reached out to officials at the Library of Congress to see whether the institution wanted to bid again. “I wanted them to be aware that this was coming back to the market,” she said. “And they said, at this point, budgets being what they are, they were just not in a position to buy it.”
If someone wanted to purchase the map on the library’s behalf, Brunk said, “they’d be happy to have it.”