The Red Brick Times

A bit of Ohio History - how we got the Township and Section layouts that define Ohio Counties, Cities, School Districts, and the boundaries of your personal space. It all started with a border dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland....

"In the mid-1760's Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, top quality surveyors imported from England, resolved the simmering border dispute between Maryland and Pennsylvania by surveying an agreed boundary line into the wilds of the Appalachians. But, they were stopped 30 miles short of the western edge of Pennsylvania because of the danger of Indian attacks. The Mason-Dixon line was the most accurately surveyed line in colonial America and it therefore became the reference point for the public land surveys that followed. "

...including Ohio. Go to http://users.rcn.com/deeds/ohio.htm and see what happened next.

If you look at a county outline map of Ohio (http://www.oardc.ohio-state.edu/centernet/mapresource.asp) you can see that many of the county edges are straight and square, even along the crinkley-bits of the Ohio River shoreline. Surveying and land speculation began early in Ohio settlement. Compare that with a county outline map of Texas (http://baby.indstate.edu/gga/gga_cart/basetx.gif) where the lands along the Gulf of Mexico are laid out with respect to the Ocean, and the rest of the state references a more national and universal grid system. The coastal regions of Texas were inhabited from the Ocean long before an overall national system was established.
Posted 9:43 AM by Andy (0) comments

       Comments:

Post a Comment


---