A strip of paper that helped carve up America—literally and later symbolically—hit the auction block on Thursday. Brunk Auctions in Asheville, North Carolina says the original 1768 hand-drawn map of the western stretch of the Mason-Dixon Line fetched $950,000 after three minutes of bidding involving 45 potential buyers, the AP reports. Pre-sale estimates ranged from $800,000 to $1.2 million.
- Just 6.5 inches high but more than 6 feet long, the ink-over-pencil manuscript bears the signatures of English surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, who used star readings and specialized instruments to fix the border between Pennsylvania and Maryland, the Asheville Citizen-Times reports.
The line they plotted to end a land feud over colonial grants to the Penn family in Pennsylvania and the Calvert family in Maryland would evolve into shorthand for the divide between North and South, free and slave. The map ended up in the papers of attorney Benjamin Chew, who represented the Penn family. It remained in the hands of the Chew family and was long mistaken for a print before it was identified as an original in 1963.
The Chew family kept the map until 1982, when publisher Malcolm Forbes outbid the Library of Congress and bought it for $360,000, a then-record for an American map, CBS News reports. It was sold again in 2002 for $556,000. Lauren Brunk, vice president of the auction house, said she contacted the Library of Congress about the auction. "I wanted them to be aware that this was coming back to the market," she said. "And they said, at this point, budgets being what they are, they were just not in a position to buy it."
- After the sale, Brunk said the buyer had decided to remain anonymous, at least for now. "I would like to say I'm thrilled that this is going to a good home and we are so happy to have had it in our presence for these last months," she said. "It also feels like a privilege to have been entrusted to steward this from one owner to the next."
- This story has been updated with the result of the auction.
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