Boundaries: How the Mason-Dixon Line Settled a Family Feud and Divided a Nation

Gr 9 Up—With her book title reflecting both theme and structure, Walker begins with the English religious boundaries that drove the Catholic Calvert family and Quaker William Penn to seek religious freedom in their respective New World colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania. Conflicting royal land grants and imprecise surveys led to a disputed boundary between the colonies, eventually resolved by an accurate land survey conducted by British scientists Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon. Much of the book describes their work, one of the most technologically challenging surveys done to that point. The author concludes with a discussion of how their survey line became a physical and symbolic boundary that marked the divisions in pre- and post-Civil War America, concluding that it remains a representational historic link to contemporary physical and cultural boundaries. Walker's account, supplemented with numerous illustrations and maps, of the conflicts along the disputed boundary and Mason and Dixon's innovative methods of scientific surveying is comprehensive and objective but is occasionally dry, and some of the complex scientific and technical concepts will be too difficult for middle school readers. Her emphasis on the survey provides a perspective missing in titles such as John C. Davenport's The Mason-Dixon Line (Chelsea House, 2004), which focuses on the line's political and military role in the antebellum slavery debate and Civil War and the postwar cultural division between North and South. While the topic won't draw a large audience, its importance in American history makes this book a strong report choice about the boundaries that shaped our nation or science in early America.—Mary Mueller, Rolla Public Schools, MO