1768 survey that divided free and slave states draws 45 bidders
The hand-drawn map showing the Mason-Dixon Line — the survey that eventually divided free from slave states in the United States — sold Thursday, Oct. 29, for $950,000 at Brunk Auctions in Asheville, North Carolina. The sale was held online and in person.
Forty-five bidders competed for the document for just under three minutes, with bidding starting at $400,000. While the price fell short of the hoped-for $1.2 million high estimate, Brunk Auctions Vice President Lauren Brunk said she was pleased. “It’s a very high price for a map,” she said.
Brunk said the buyer asked to remain anonymous, at least for the time being. She said the Library of Congress was not among Thursday’s bidders.
Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon finished the survey in 1768. It was originally commissioned to settle a border dispute between what were then the colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania.
The survey was used in the 1820 Missouri Compromise to establish the limits of human bondage in the young United States and became synonymous with the fundamental divisions that exploded into the Civil War four decades later.
The late publisher Malcolm Forbes bought the map in 1982 for $360,000, beating out the Library of Congress. The document sold again in 2002 for $556,000.
“I would like to say I’m thrilled that this is going to a good home and we are so happy to have had it in our presence for these last months,” Brunk said. “It also feels like a privilege to have been entrusted to steward this from one owner to the next.”
A vertical section of the map showing the Delaware-Maryland border is housed at Princeton University.