NP MD: Fate of the markers

[David Foreman]

	"Souvenir hunters, removing the milestones set down by Mason and Dixon,
were in large part responsible for these later surveys.  The stones,
carefully cut in England of oolitic limestone (known more popularly as
Portland stone), were marked with a P on one side and an M on the other
except that at every fifth mile the stones bore the coat of arms of the
Penns and Lord Baltimore.  As early as 1768 the stone at the "middle point"
on the peninsular east and west line disappeared, a victim of
fortune-hunters raised on tales of that Captain Kidd and other pirates had
buried treasures along the shores of the Chesapeake.  More than one mile
marker was lost to these "money diggers,"who for generations refused to
believe that these stones-- and especially those bearing armorial
inscriptions-- had not been left in the forests by treasure-bearing
freebooters.
	"Writing in _Harper's new Monthly Magazine_ for September, 1876, the
Reverend Tryon Edwards, who should have been a reliable witness, remembered
seeing one such mile marker used as a cornerstone and support of a
cornhouse; nearby four or five other mile markers provided the steps to the
front door of a Negro's cabin.  Since both these observations were made in
Washington County, Maryland, near the site of old Fort Frederick, vandalism
probably was not involved.  When the last shipload of milestones arrived,
Mason and Dixon had stopped their survey at the Warpath; the stones, dumped
at the fort, must have constituted a nuisance and anyone willing to cart
them away should have been encouraged to do so.  Through the years other
milestones have been recovered from their impressment as doorsteps and
curbstones; and future souvenir hunters, who read these pages, are
forewarned that sooner or later the vigilant historian, if not the long arm
of the law, will catch up with such mischief."

_Border Romance_
Earl Schenk Miers
Newark, Delaware: Spiral Press, 1965
pages 24-5