i it's a book that he has written walking in the footsteps of history by jack layton and may i present jack layton thank you very much and thank you for inviting me to calm her arm it has been a long time yes it i started writing this book quite a while ago and ran into had a publisher run into some difficulties and kind of got to a little bit frustrated and then resurrected the project and lo and behold here it's come to fruition and i read the book and it's very very interesting and it's wonderful the way you've done it you've put diagrams in here and also you put some of your humor into it which lightens some of the about the kings in ancient times and i say ancient times in the seventeenth century they would write land grants that which describe borders that when you tried to do them on the ground put them on the ground they just didn't work in sixteen thirty two king at charles the first gave george calvert who was the first lord baltimore a land grant for maryland and he wrote the borders in there what they would be and along many years later and sixteen eighty one thing charles the second gave the pen family a land grant and these borders as written by contradicted wanted other if you took one of the interpretations of the convert family's land grant why part of philadelphia would be unbearable and oh if you took the  happened over this border dispute and finally they took it to court in the year of seventeen thirty two to the chancery court in england and it became known as known as the great chancery case and it was finally settled and in seventeen fifty some eighteen years later we think we have problems with our courts to death but that didn't really end  problem of court did say that the border the disputed border neither one of these would would be that the border between pennsylvania and maryland would be a line of latitude that was fifteen miles south of the most southern point in the city of philadelphia you think well that settled it but they had to find people that would serve a this so the next problem came when the penn family would come up with a surveyor the calvert family would say this guy's going to  cheat us he's your guy and vice versa and so on and so forth finally they went back to the court again in england and told him of this and there were other problems that people disagreed with and you could almost read between the lines when you read some of the background of this that the court was getting fed up with this whole business and would like to see it go away and they said we have two people that are willing and able to do this survey their names are charles mason and jeremiah dixon you sit down with them and you decide how you're going to pay them to do this ad so that's how the two were chosen charles mason was a thirty five year old bath of a titian and astronomer jeremiah dixon was a thirty year old mathematician and surveyor and the two of them and worked together before on various projects so on september the third of seven hundred sixty three why they boarded a sailing ship in england and the two of them along with their instruments came across the choppy atlantic and they arrived in philadelphia on nov fifteenth of seventeen sixty three that's where they that's when they started that's where they started there in philadelphia probably one of the first things they saw as they came up the delaware river there was a was a building which still stands and it's been restored but today the with the house it was really the farm house of the plantation house of james and and with all i know since right there on the banks of the river not far from where i was born wow  and used to see that as a kid it was also about a battle of the revolutionary war that was fought there whether historically to play yeah and yet it's and it's a park it's a it's a it's a state park today so that building still sta s and you can it's very stored to the way it was back the building dates back to seventeen forty three oh it was built and it's it's been restored to its seventy reent going on in england and europe at the time and they wanted to establish a colony in the new world that was mainly a catholic colony so they've got the language and for that the king the king charles the second own pen family lots and lots of money well it was twenty two thousand dollars at that time but not isolated standards and lots and lots of money and in order to settle that debt the king didn't have the money so he agreed to give the pen that caused them to overlap and conflict with some of the borders of maryland time so that's how the survey line came about and they didn't try to before he gave that land grant he didn't try to find out if he was doing it right started out in philadelphia and rather than try to serve a ten fifteen mile south of that as the court said they moved their lot they would had a survey diagonally across the delaware river which is a couple miles and then down into new jersey and then back across the river again so rather than do that they moved their point they determined the latitude of the most southern point the city of philadelphia when you know wait a minute you said new jersey new jersey is may appear and i knew jersey across the river right there and they would have had to survey across the delaware river if they went due south from this most southern point city of philadelphia really and they would have ended up there and then had to survey back again river and that was  you know they could have done that but that wasn't the practical thing to do so they see kermit the latitude at this point which today is it about where south street in philadelphia joins the river philadelphia's much larger today than it was back in seven hundred seventeen hundreds and so they moved point about thirty two miles to the west to a place in newlin township pennsylvania which is near westchester and from there then they stood there their fifteen mile south survey at nolan township they wintered over there because they didn't quit about october so the survey and pick up the pieces pick up where they left  off again in april or so the following year and they stated of place their wintered over in a farmhouse there that was owned by the harlem family that farm house is still there today they original portions of that were built in the late sixteen hundreds oh belong to the harlem family and today belongs to a lady by the name it name of kate roby kind of interesting because she bought that farmhouse and i looked and i did find out i found the marker that sarah cortes marker that they used as their survey point i couldn't find this farmhouse and that was bothering me so i did schedule another trip back there and i figure i'm going to find this is pretty good this is sure enough i found that it's it's it's not really hidden but if you're not looking for it looking in the right place you're going to miss it and i went up to the door of the farmhouse and knocked on it and i hear footsteps coming and kind of my adrenaline like glass shake their o b s her name she bought the house didn't know what it was until after she had bought it and i knocked on it when she came to the door i introduced myself and told her what i was doing writing a book and asked her if this was the old harlot farmhouse and she said indeed it is i said could i talk to you and she invited me in and it's it's really a neat she took me on a tour of the first floor of the place and the thing that stuck in my mind was a very large fireplace that's there which heated the building of course and those days were probably more of this was so big you could almost walk in it i mean the fireplace day every year and and from there they surveyed this fifteen miles south and they put in a marker there it was an oak marker that they put it in so the original is long gone and it's called the postmark west and that is the anchor point for the whole east west mason dixon line the southern border of pennsylvania in those days the delaware the three counties of delaware where the lower three counties of pennsylvania oh that was part of pennsylvania so part of their commission was to survey that lawn and almost the north south line that today separates delaware from maryland it's an eighty two mile line it begins down at the southwest corner of delaware and comes up and touches that circle if you've seen maps the circle of the northern border of delaware and that really came about because that was a land grant said that the northern border would be a whole lands within thirteen i'm sorry twelve miles of the city of new castle delaware would be included in that language and that's where the circle came from so this dividing line they had that they surveyed called the tangent line that comes from down in the midpoint of the delmarva peninsula up and just touches that circle and that's it's a line that runs just a little bit historic city and it's still call new castle it's still called new castle and there's a very there's a historic section of town and rambled around that for a couple of days and there's an old cemetery there that i went  that stuff was there long before mason and dixon did the survey or even you know and any thoughts that they would ever do the survey and the old courthouse is there then surely there's a dispute early on before mason and dixon  to where this circle this twelve mile circle where the center point of that would be and finally it was decided would be the spire the courthouse there in newcastle so the old courthouse is still sitting there and when i went there why it was under there were doing some reconstruction so i couldn't go take a tour of it but that it's there and lots of other historic buildings are there there's a lot of history all around all around us here oh yeah there's enough a lot of history inside the delaware as you progress along there that line that long line from there and the mason dixon line did some people you mentioned that no say well that was the dividing line for the civil war well the mason dixon line was there  hundred years before the civil war and all of west virginia which is today west virginia which is part of virginia in those days in this subscribe to slavery so it really wasn't it was kind of  was a slave state and delaware to the part of west for to what is today west virginia those counties of virginia were not that's how the state came about but as you progress along there of course you eventually come to the maryland border where maryland and west virginia and pennsylvania all come together and i remember trying to find that marker i thought i got to find this and i knew where where i was but wasn't sure how to get back in and did way back in the woods there and finally and i describe it in the book of somebody wants to go see it how you can go back in there with a four wheel drive vehicle i drove up to the mark i remember driving there it was a hot summer morning and i got out of the i was in the vehicle and i thought that marker is gonna be here somewhere close by and oh i don't like in the woods it's in a woods yeah it's it's you have to go looking for it's very heavily wooded area nobody nobody's there to care for it no out of the car i thought the markers here i want to find it and there it was you know more than probably fifteen feet from me and if it could talk it would have said tell me there oh yeah you're looking all over for at that point together for the fact that that's the way it's written in his journal some of the things there were i did make some subtle changes because there were a few things that i had to rethink what does this really mean things and i thought i better call you up on something but  that that point they were that were the marker that i was telling you about he describes in his journal and i have that part that paragraph or two in there where they encountered this was bad very bad indian territory out here and the european settlers were not welcome in this area and there were many many stories of horrible things that took place so they were well aware of some of these things that were going on and that at that almost at that point where where the states come together in that marker is they were surprised right after dark one evening when twelve indians showed up they were using mason and dixon were using indians for part of their the workers there to cut trees and do the heavy labor and of course everybody was scared of the jeebies out of the way that they thought for sure this was then this is going to be yes but it wasn't but from there on they were very cautious mace of the says in his journal that they didn't use guns anymore to shoot deer and other things for food they did a lot of fishing and they also took a herd of sheep along with him to zero really yeah there and then the survey party at times which was made up of ninety plus people i mean it wasn't all these two guys traipsing through the woods but there's so many so many fascinating stories that i tired up along that tangent line there's a pool town called reliance right on the delaware today it's the delaware maryland border and there's a house that still stands there the house is owned by patty cannon and patty was a canadian it showed up in those parts around eighteen ten she married a native guy there by the name of joe johnson and patty and joe johnson ran a tavern just on the delaware side of the border like several hundred feet into delaware their house is seven several hundred feet into merlin the house still stands escape from virginia ran up through there called underground railroad because people there were there was a lot of people that aided the slaves it was a physical and for a longest time once they got there they were scarred you can get a physical exam now you can get one later use our free risk calculator and talk to your doctor lower your risk for type two diabetes and heart disease and live a healthier life hey we're back at manly and hearing interesting and we brought up a couple of new points that we want to talk about and this is really a very interesting idea and it would take somebody with to write a book like this that just explains everything that happened is it really had me feel like you're there they're right here one of the subtitle of the book is walking in the footsteps of history right and i wanted to i wanted to do that i i was hoping to area they were would capture slaves as they tried to escape from virginia and they would change them to the trees and into the basement of the house there that still stands and when they when they gathered up  chesapeake bay went over to the place where the ship docked place called woodland ferry and it's such a calm and serene place today i mean it's just a pretty place hard to imagine that these are of all things took place there in to people that they were free that's right they thought they were free and they grabbed by these people anyway the police sheriff from delaware would come and patty and her husband could be in maryland at the house and of them and so finally one day everybody got together and the sheriff from the maryland side showed up and the one from delaware showed up and they took patty into custody and what they were doing was not in an avid self illegal however people lost their lives so some of the slaves had been killed in this process that went on this enterprise that her and her husband were involved in petty could have asked to something like five or six murders so she was taken off to a jail in georgetown delaware and the jailer was was questioning her after she got to the jail and patty very quietly just reached into her pocket baltimore and washington railroad in the eighteen hundreds right after the civil war crossed from delaware into maryland and i went there and looking for a railroad in the railroads long been abandoned but i found the tracks coming out of the woods  what have you but there's a story that happened about eight hundred seventy there where the morning train came in and of course a huge steam locomotive pulled into town and a very well dressed gentleman got off at this train and seven of them walked down the railroad track about a quarter of a mile and one guy had a suitcase or briefcase and he went into town was filled with cash and he bought two  wagons and two teams of horses the other seven had gone down the down the tracks about a quarter of a mile and the townspeople heard two gunshots but all seven of  came walking back down the trail well nobody knew when on yeah the they get into these two two wagons with the teams of horses and they get out of town quick one goes one way or the other goes the other way years go on nobody knew that was like a legend in that town they will find me on a death bed a man tells the story among those people that got off of the train it's a guy by the name of james bennett he was a famous journalist and another guy by the i'm afraid may who was a world explorer and the two of these guys had a falling out over a woman and they wanted to settle this well dueling was illegal chest just for hold it there for about ten seconds and then post the pistol up in the air and pull the trigger discharges oh i and then of course they all got out of town yeah you think they beat it but that's some of the stories and i'm sure if you dig deep enough you find a lot of stories people like to talk that's right and it's fun to go along in places like that in little out of the way places to get people to talk the survey line passes just south of gettysburg course we all know the story of gettysburg passes it's almost just at the very edge of raven mountain which is called site are that's probably a secret white house where we know that the vice president cheney disappeared right after two thousand the right eleven he probably was there to hollowed out mountain it's a very secretive place that would tip you off that there's something there are some towers a tower and a couple of antennas strange looking antennas on top of them out but it is a it is a government compound and it's pretty much known to be underground white house a way that was built in the one nine hundred fifty s right not too long after the second world war when the soviets had a an atomic bomb and and we were concerned what would happen to our government if this got used on us and so that was the hideaway for the president of course we know about there's one down and greenbrier there for the congress was going to use and there supposedly is another one in virginia culpepper virginia for the supreme court going oh that so that that's there and that was interesting i tried to go up a back mountain road there and suddenly there was jersey barriers across the road and a guard house a very well armed marine came out of this and yes can i help you and i said well this one to take a picture i said is not ok and his comment was you can do anything on that side of the fence but don't try to come over to th so i took my picture and there's a picture of the guard house there he didn't want his picture taken he wanted to get out of the picture so i took a picture of the guard house and camp david is along there just to the south of the line in the about  further why there's hancock marlen which is where the barrel in the neck of maryland mason was concerned and i have the passage of of in his journal expressing his concern that maryland the potomac river which was the border between virginia and maryland that came too far north it was going to go north of this survey line which would greatly complicate things because that would make maryland into pieces not connected o well as it turned out that's about a mile and a half in the neck there of maryland and had the river come a mile and a half further north or had the line been a mile and a half in the river was there called the bank road and it connected connected hancock with points east and that's a restored toll house and it's open for visitors at times wasn't open when i tried a couple of times to go and see it and i arrived at times when it wasn't an open but that that connected basically baltimore with points there i disagreed with them if anybody tried to survey anything there you'd run him out of them and finally one day the sheriff came into town to to quell some disturbance and it was a gun fight with cresap in his it's guys and  around cumberland maryland and there's a town just south of cumberland called crescent and he comes in later on he and nema colon who was an indian chief cut a path from cumberland all the way up to where brownsville pennsylvania is today and that was called maccollins path that was twelve foot wide through the woods and and later product came a few years later came through there and widened that so we could bring his army through there pennsylvania beautifully restored and the old list of tolls still hangs there and that kind of interesting to read that that was interesting how much it was the you know one horse with wagon afor american revolution are charge of that particular toll house there's another toll house further on in there that road goes from that road originally went from cumberland to wheeling west virginia midway there there is up on route forty today somewhat off of the mason dixon line there's an old hotel called the washington tavern and it's restored right there on route forty near fort necessity and that the stagecoach got its name they people would take journeys and stages and a stage was about seventy five miles and you could travel that in one day so of horse drawn carriage through a wilderness i would guess by the end of seventy five miles or ready to stop no indeed people stop there and they stayed there overnight and there were some provisions it was it was a tavern and a place to stay and then the other seventy five miles was from there to two or two over to get back to mason and dixon there with i was interested in how they carried their equipment you were saying something about this one very delicate piece instrument that they yeah i think that people would like to know something about that was the way they surveyed they shot the stars to determine where they were and they were trying to do or what they did do they were commissioned to do and they in fact it  long line of longitude one of latitude is not a straight line it curves goes around the earth so you can't survey circle directly so what they did they broke it into pieces and they used was they would shoot the stars and they could tell where they were and how far they were off of the line they would go live in miles and then stop and it would take them fourteen to twenty one days of clear nights to shoot enough stars to determine where they were and then they would move to send the rug workers back to move the markers so that they were on this long line of latitude rather than on the str and it's amazing the worst error in that two hundred thirty three mile long line is seven hundred feet that's it hundred feet that's it i could well to look at some of that today even  within about fifteen or twenty seconds of where i am and it took them took them two two weeks sometimes more than that as a long goes further crosses the the cheat river not too far from where we are here there's a huge hydroelectric dam on the river right on the border no more than maybe three or four hundred feet in the west virginia i think you can see that from the rest stop in rob lake the river dammed up the cheat river which makes the is is a a mill steel mill was in the eighteen hundreds of was eventually closed because it went bankrupt but the remnants of that are down in the valley there on the water as you progress so idea across the the monongahela river and there's another disputed border virginia claim this very territory that we're in sitting in right here today it's kind of interesting in my research of some of these things i found a couple land grants here in peter's township that were written by the commonwealth of virginia in the late seventy eight hundred seventeen seventies in that only came twice a year to this area and he had just been there in may and he wasn't coming back until september so calmly got his men out on bail on his word being an officer and a gentleman that he would come back on the appointed day when the judge would be of harrisburg came too so indeed mr connolly or captain conley and his group along with many other soldiers came back on the appointed day they arrested the sheriff all of his deputies and you can see if you read between the lines a little bit that governor dunmore got cold feet over all this and he let everybody go and as you move on further there why you go past  morgantown the line runs just north of morgantown lots of coal mines a chapter there in the book that i call under the law in some of those coal mines that are there some of so active today that stretch miles and miles into pennsylvania and the long long time ago and long you know antiquity equator wasn't far from this place where we and they were topical tropical forest air and that's where the coal comes from today in this area and you know i think you're great you're going to have to read this book in order to find out the rest of this and that and up the line and just about to near mount morris that's as far as mason and dixon surveyed the indians wouldn't go any further they say there this is it and so the line and there's a marker on browns hill and  rest of it wasn't surveyed until about thirty thirty years or so there are so i know you were going to say something about how you got interested in hearing that there was a gentleman that lives here in peter's township guys would meet at the park almost every morning for breakfast and we had a table set off in the one side there i called it a table of knowledge my wife said it was a good ole boys club but sam and i would one day we got talking about the border of pennsylvania and why does pennsylvania stop abruptly and go north and sam said that's because of the land grant so william penn described those borders well sure enough the next day sam came in with the paul copy of the land grant and that lives that's what interested me in it and sam passed away and about two thousand or two thousand and one his son still comes in ed almost every day to park and but sam was a fine gentleman that certainly knowledgeable and one time he taught it carnegie university before it was carnegie mellon and he was into ham radio and that was a history press if you go on the web site american history press dot com why the book is you can buy the book through them or amazon and it should be available in barnes and noble and their stores here if it is already there certainly very shortly it's on their website at this point so it ought to be in the stores well i wish you lots of luck with your book at everything and i like i said i was very interested in that because it not only gave your historical facts and everything