Benjamin Franklin | Landmark map of the proposed boundary line between Maryland and Pennsylvania

Benjamin Franklin

[Map of the Proposed Boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania]. Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin, 1733

Woodcut map (418 x 335 mm). Place names in letterpress, and a thin line of red hand-color following the boundary in the map; old folds, light soiling, a few minor chips and very short tears along the edges, some small remnants of old adhesive along the right edge, a thin strip of toning at the top edge, Japanese tissue on the verso reinforcing two folds, altogether a bright and attractive copy. Matted.

The first American edition of Franklin's landmark map—the precursor to the Mason-Dixon Line, the first map ever printed in Philadelphia, and "the earliest known map to be printed in the English Colonies south of New York" (Wheat and Brun).

Franklin's map shows the boundaries between Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland as they were initially agreed to in 1732 by the Penn family and Charles Calvert, Fifth Lord Baltimore. It represents a significant moment in this multigenerational land dispute. The map is after John Senex's earlier engraved map (London: 1732), and it was published in Franklin's Articles of Agreement Made and Concluded upon Between...The Lord Proprietary of Maryland, and … the Proprietarys of Pensilvania (Philadelphia, 1733).

The dispute between Lord Baltimore and the Penns began in 1681, when issues with the boundaries separating their colonies were first discovered. The problems stemmed from inaccurate mapping, a lack of geographical knowledge, and vaguely written royal charters. In 1685, the king attempted to resolve the conflict by creating a north-south line that bisected the Delmarva peninsula and granted William Penn the Lower Three Counties, or Delaware. That decision, however, remained disputed by Lord Baltimore, making it difficult for the Penns to collect rents on their lands.

The negotiations intensified in 1731. The Penns, in a weaker negotiating position due to lack of funds, agreed to use Lord Baltimore's map of the region and acceded to his demand that the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania be placed 15 miles south of Philadelphia, rather than 20 miles south. Once both parties agreed to the terms and Senex engraved a map of the new boundary, they began to plan for an official survey. However, Lord Baltimore soon realized that Cape Henlopen, an important marker on the map, was incorrectly placed twenty miles to the South. This cost him around a third of Delaware, so he tried to renege on his agreement, claiming that the Penns had defrauded him with his own map.

In response to Baltimore's unsubstantiated claims, Thomas Penn "decided to have the Agreement printed so that anyone reading its articles could judge for himself how unreasonably Baltimore's commissioners were behaving. Taking his original copy to Benjamin Franklins shop, he ordered Franklin to print five hundred copies of it in pamphlet form, together with the map, which Franklin reproduced as a woodcut from the copperplate impression on Penn's parchment. Franklin turned out a fine job" (Wainwright, p.260). It is probable that Franklin himself cut the woodblock—a bill to "the proprietors" dated June 1733 includes "for cutting the mapp in wood £2" (Wheat and Brun, p. 102). Franklin is known to have taught himself some engraving, and produced small woodcuts of different types and plates for paper money.

It would take a long, drawn-out court case and thirty-six more years for the boundary dispute to finally be laid to rest. The resolution was set forth in another map, engraved after detailed surveys by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, and it was agreed to by both parties in 1768. It set the borders where they still stand today.

REFERENCES

Miller 63; Wheat and Brun 474; Streeter sale II:950; Nicholas Wainwright, “Tale of a Runaway Cape,” in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 87, no. 3 (July 1963)