More than a century and a half after Mason and Dixon drew the boundary line separating Pennsylvania and Maryland, the question about the location of the border got entangled in a federal prohibition case. The wrangling started after Deputy Sheriff Joseph Short and Federal Dry Agent John M. Spicer raided a moonshine plant near Goat Hill northwest of Rising Sun in October 1928.1
The British surveyors had settled the dispute for the Penn and Calvert families in 1768. Nonetheless, in the roaring ‘20s, the uncertainty of whether Archie Akers produced rum north or south of the state line vexed officials.
The raiding officers charged Akers with manufacturing alcohol, a violation of the federal Volstead Act. However, when he appeared in court in Baltimore, legal wrangling arose over the timeworn geographical question. Did the alleged crime happen in Pennsylvania or Maryland? Who had jurisdiction?2
Those were the legal uncertainties that puzzled the court. Akers was unsure, the Baltimore Sun noted. He knew he resided in Cecil County because he paid taxes there, “But there was the tradition that the line ran close to his domicile,” Akers testified. But how close was not certain.3
As lawyers and the judge mulled over frustrating legalities, they hit upon a solution—order the U.S. Government to resurvey that part of the line. That would settle the controversy, making it plain which court had jurisdiction.
When the men re-ran the line south of Goat Hill for the court, “Pennsylvania won—or lost—by a margin of a couple of hundred yards,” the survey showed. Moreover, this “disclosed that a certain deputy sheriff of Maryland transgressed his jurisdiction when he aided prohibition officers in entrapping the man,” the Sun .wrote.
While taking precise measurements, the men noticed an old British quarried stone, Milestone No. 16, one of the originals placed by Mason and Dixon in 1766. It was in an isolated hilly area north of Ridge Road, at the south edge of the 440-foot high Goat Hill, a summit in Chester County that descends into Maryland.4,5
Having settled the peculiar legal dispute, officials transferred the case to the Philadelphia District of the Federal Court, according to William Childs Purnell, assistant United States District Attorney. If the shooting affray had not complicated the case against Akers, he could have tried it in Maryland as the federal Volstead act permitted presentments in any jurisdiction, he explained.
But when Akers held the raiding officers at bay for some time with his repeating rifle, that complicated the prohibition case as both incidents occurred entirely on the Pennsylvania side, the redrawing of the line showed.
Goat Hill is shown on the U.S. Geographical Survey Topo Map (2019)
For More on Mason Dixon Line in Cecil County See
Border War Flares Up Over Cheap Maryland Booze
Endnotes- “Cecil Man Held in $10,000 Over Rum,” News Journal, Nov.2, 1928[↩]
- “Mason Dixon Line Re-Run to Fix Location of Still,” Baltimore Sun, March 10, 1929[↩]
- ibid[↩]
- United State Geological Survey, Rising Sun Quadrangle [map], 2019[↩]
- Maryland Historical Trust, Inventory Form for State Historic Sites Survey, Milestone No. 16, 1980[↩]