Dixon`s biography

[Daniel O'Hara]

Dixon, Jeremiah 1733-1779, surveyor and astronomer, was 
born in Bishop Auckland, county Durham, 27 July 1733, the 
fifth of the seven children of George Dixon, a well-to-do Quaker 
coalmine owner, and his wife Mary Hunter of Newcastle. He 
was educated at John Kipling’s School in Barnard Castle, where 
he acquired an interest in mathematics and astronomy. While 
still a young man in south Durham, he made the acquaintance of 
the mathematician William Emerson, the instrument-maker John 
Bird, and the natural philosopher Thomas Wright [qq.v.].
In 1760 the Royal Society chose Charles Mason [q.v.] to go 
to Sumatra to observe the 1761 transit of Venus, and, probably 
on Bird’s recommendation, Mason suggested Dixon should go 
as his assistant. An encounter with a French frigate delayed 
their final sailing so that they could not reach Sumatra in time. 
They therefore landed at the Cape of Good Hope, where the 
transit was successfully observed on 6 June 1761. On the 
passage home, they stopped at St Helena in October and, after 
discussion with Nevil Maskelyne [q.v.], who had observed the 
transit there, Dixon returned temporarily to the Cape with 
Maskelyne’s clock to carry out gravity experiments. Mason 
and Dixon eventually reached England early in 1762.
In August 1763 Mason and Dixon signed an agreement with 
Thomas Penn and Frederick Calvert, seventh Baron Baltimore 
[qq.v.], hereditary proprietors of the provinces of Pennsylvania 
and Maryland, to go to North America to help local surveyors 
define the disputed boundary between the two provinces. 
Arriving in Philadelphia with their instruments in November, 
they began operations before Christmas 1763. When work for 
the proprietors on what was to become the famous 
Mason-Dixon line was complete late in 1766, they began on the 
Royal Society’s behalf, at Dixon’s suggestion, to measure a 
degree of the meridian on the Delmarva peninsula in Maryland 
and to make gravity measurements with a clock sent out by the 
Society, the same one that Maskelyne had had in St Helena and 
Dixon took to the Cape in 1761. They reported their task 
complete on 21 June 1768 and sailed for England on 11 
September. Before leaving, they were both admitted as 
corresponding members of the American Society held in 
Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge.
In 1769 Dixon sailed to Norway with William Bayly [q.v.] in the 
Emerald to make observations of the transit of Venus on 3 June 
on the Royal Society’s behalf. Dixon observed on Hammerfest 
Island, Bayly at North Cape, about sixty miles apart in case of 
cloudy weather. They reached England again on 30 July.
Dixon returned to Durham, resuming his work as a surveyor. 
Among places he surveyed at this time were the park of 
Auckland Castle and Lanchester Common. He died unmarried in 
Cockfield, county Durham, 22 January 1779. He should not be 
confused with his contemporary, Jeremiah Dixon, FRS 
(1726-1782) of Gledhow, near Leeds, son-in-law of John Smeaton 
[q.v.].