Crownstone (along the Mason-Dixon Line)

A Crownstone is a marker stone that stands every five miles along the Mason-Dixon Line, the boundary surveyed by Quaker Jeremiah Dixon (1733 - 1779) and his partner, Charles Mason.

A border dispute between three colonies

Surveying took place between 1763 - 1767 in order to resolve a border dispute involving Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware in colonial America.

Outdated maps meant fresh measurements were needed, but previous colonial surveys had proved inaccurate. So, Englishmen Mason and Dixon were hired by the family of William Penn of Pennsylvania and the Calvert family of Maryland, as the duo were known in England as master surveyors and astronomers.

It would take the two men 4four years of lugging their equipment across hundreds of miles of wilderness, to complete the survey and cement their place in the timeline of the founding of the United States.

The Mason-Dixon line had marker stones every mile and Crownstones every five miles. The Maryland side says '(M)' and the Delaware and Pennsylvania sides say '(P)'.

Today, while a number of the original stones are missing or buried, many are still visible, resting on public land and protected by iron cages.

The Mason-Dixon Line was drawn in two parts. An 83-mile (133.5 km) stretch runs north to south between Maryland and Delaware.

The more recognised stretch runs 233-mile (375 km) west to east between Pennsylvania and Maryland, from just south of Philadelphia to what is now West Virginia.

Hailed as a groundbreaking technical achievement of its age, the line came to symbolise the border between the Civil War North and South, separating free Pennsylvania from slave-owning Maryland.

Return to England

Years before he sailed for America, in 1760, Dixon was disowned by the Society of Friends for drinking to excess.

An entry in the Quaker minute book of Raby, County Durham, dated October 1760, reads, “Jery Dixon, son of George and Mary Dixon of Cockfield, disowned for drinking to excess.”

After the Mason-Dixon Line was complete, Dixon returned to Durham and went back to surveying, including the park at Auckland Castle.

Scientist, Surveyor and Stargazer

Dixon died in 1779 and was buried in an unmarked grave in a Quaker burial ground at Cockfield, County Durham. Charles Mason (1728 - 1786) returned to England, then went back to Philadelphia shortly before he died.

The exact site of Mason's grave was lost, though one of the original Mason-Dixon stones was placed there in his memory in 2013. The 'Mason' crater on the moon is also named after him.

In 2013, an exhibition about the life and work of Dixon was mounted at the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, County Durham, titled Jeremiah Dixon: Scientist, Surveyor and Stargazer.

Dixon and Mason are largely forgotten in the land of their birth. But along hundreds of miles of American countryside, their crownstones still stand — quiet, numbered, still doing the job they were cut for.