The History of Mason and Dixon's Line

[Dave Monroe]

Hey ho, whaddaya know ...

Latrobe, John H.B.  The History of Mason and Dixon's
   Line.  Philadelphia: Historical Society of
   Pennsylvania, 1855.

http://www.webincunabula.com/html/la/latrobe.htm

>From David Foreman, "Historical Documents Relating to
Mason & Dixon," Pynchon and Mason & Dixon, ed. Brooke
Horvath and Irving Malin (Newark: U of Delaware P,
2000), pp. 143-66 ...

   "Another important source for Pynchon's
characterization of both Mason and Dixon is a document
that predates the Civil war.  In 1854, John H.B.
Latrobe delivered an address, 'The History of Mason
and Dixon's Line' ....  In a moment of 'very idle
speculation,' Latrobe attempts to determine the
characters of the surveyors by analyzing the
signatures that appear in Mason's journal.  Mason,
claims Latrobe, 'from these small hints ... was a
cool, deliberate, pains taking man, never in a hurry;
a man of quiet courage, who crossed the Monongahela
with fifteen men, because it was his duty to do so.' 
In contrast, Dixon's signature is not the consistent,
uniform mark of his partner:

All he seems to have cared to do was to put something
on paper that would indicate his presence.... 
Occasionally, his signature is very small; again, it
is as large and sprawling as a schoolboy's; from all
which, I infer that he was a younger man, a more
active
man, a man of impatient spirit and nervous teperament,
just such a man as worked best with a sobersided
colleague. [Latrobe, p. 41]

http://www.webincunabula.com/html/la/latrobe_41.jpg

   "Edward Bennett Mathews repeats Latrobe's
observations about Mason and Dixon in his 1909 history
of the boundar dispute, as does Earl Schenk Miers in
his 1965 essay, Border Romance.  In The Stargazers, a
novel remarkably similar to Pynchon's work in many
respects, Barbara Susan Lefever also portrays the two
according to Latrobe's design.  Lefever's Mason is the
older, strong-willed, advice-dispensing astronomer. 
Dixon is less restrained." (p. 157)

See, then ...

Lefever, Barbara Susan.  The Stargazers.
   York, PA: Printing Express, 1986.  p. 128

Mathews, Edward Bennett.  "History of the Boundary
   Dispute between the Baltimores and Penns Resulting
   in the Original Mason and Dixon Line."  Report on
   the Resurvey of the Maryland-Pennsylvania Boundary.
   Harrisburg, PA: Harrisburg Publishing, 1909.
   p. 185

Miers, Earl Schenck.  Border Romance: The Story of
   the Exploits of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon.
   Newark, DE: Spiral Press, 1965.  pp. 20-21.

I'll try to, at least ...

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