The Penn–Calvert boundary dispute (also known as Penn vs. Baltimore) was a long-running legal conflict between William Penn and his heirs on one side, and Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore and his heirs on the other side. The overlapping nature of their charters of land in Colonial America required numerous attempts at mediation, surveying, and intervention by the king and courts of England to ultimately be resolved. Subsequent questions over these charters have also been adjudicated by American arbitrators and the Supreme Court of the United States. The boundary dispute shaped the eventual borders of five U.S. states: Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and West Virginia.
Background In 1629, Samuel Godin and Samuel Blommaert sent agents of the Dutch West India Company to negotiate with the local Nanticoke tribe to purchase land on Cape Henlopen near present-day Lewes, Delaware. With the support of New Netherland's colonial leadership at New Amsterdam, a new colony named Zwaanendael was established on the purchased land in 1631 by David Pietersz de Vries. The colony proved to be very short-lived, as conflicts with the Nanticoke led to it being wiped out within a year. A second attempt at establishing a colony at that location in 1632 was soon abandoned. The division maintains a monument at the site of the original colony as well as a museum dedicated to interpreting its history.
On June 20, 1632, King Charles I granted Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore a charter for land along the Chesapeake Bay. The northern boundary of the charter was the 40th parallel, and the eastern boundary was the Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. However, the charter only granted the Calverts the right to "uncultivated" lands. The colonists arrived in Maryland in 1634, but made no attempts at surveying the northern border or colonizing the area along the Delaware Bay. See section "History of the Boundary Dispute Between the Baltimores and Penns Resulting in the Original Mason and Dixon Line" by Edward Bennett Matthews
The colony of New Sweden was established north of the Delaware Bay, at Fort Christina near present-day Wilmington, Delaware, in 1638. Viewing this as an incursion into their territory, the Dutch in 1651 established a new outpost, Fort Casimir at present-day New Castle, Delaware, south of Fort Christina. The Swedes conquered Fort Casimir in 1654, but Peter Stuyvesant, the Director-General of New Netherland, retaliated and in 1655, he both took back Fort Casmir and conquered Fort Christina. Stuyvesant renamed Fort Casimir as New Amstel, and placed a deputy there to oversee the entire region, reporting back to Stuyvesant at New Amsterdam.
The English objected to the colonization attempts of both Sweden and the Netherlands and Maryland sent a delegate to New Amstel in 1659 protesting their presence on land granted to Lord Baltimore. However, it was not until 1664 when the English would formally act against their colonial rivals. That year King Charles II granted his brother James, the Duke of York, all the land between the Connecticut and Delaware Rivers. Fort Amsterdam was captured on September 8, 1664, and Stuyvesant formally surrendered the territories of New Netherland the next day. The colonial outposts along the Delaware Bay surrendered as well soon after, and New Amstel was renamed New Castle by the English—though it was still governed by a deputy reporting to New Amsterdam, now named New York after the Duke, even though the Duke had not received a charter from the king for these lands.
In 1681, William Penn was granted a charter for Pennsylvania by Charles II. This charter included the first documentary mention of the carve-out of a twelve mile circle around the town of New Castle. Lord Baltimore (now Cecil's son, Charles Calvert) did not object to the grant, as long as Penn's land was north of Maryland's northern border, the 40th parallel. In addition, James was allowed to retain the lands around New Castle that he had won through conquest, as Charles carved out a Twelve-Mile Circle around New Castle. Penn, who desired ocean access for his colony, convinced James to lease these lands to him as well, and so in August 1682, the Duke of York granted Penn the Twelve Mile Circle around New Castle as well as the lands south, to Cape Henlopen. Though James had deeded these lands to Penn, James himself did not formally receive a charter to the Delaware lands until March 22, 1683.
Penn sailed to the colonies and, in May 1683, he met with Calvert in New Castle. The two men disagreed on how the boundaries should be determined, including where the southern boundary of Pennsylvania should be and how the size of the Twelve Mile Circle should be judged. This meeting marked the beginning of the long legal dispute.
History of the boundary dispute Penn wanted his new colony to have access to the Chesapeake Bay, while Calvert was adamant that the 40th parallel should serve as the southernmost border of Pennsylvania and he insisted the lands on the Delaware Bay were included in the original 1632 charter for Maryland. Because the two could not agree, Penn decided to go to court. Both Penn and Calvert returned to England to participate in the case. By this time, the Duke of York had ascended to the throne as James II. Penn thought his chances in court were good, as he and James were friends and allies. He invoked the Zwaanendael Colony in making his case: the Maryland charter was only for "uncultivated" lands, but the Dutch had cultivated the area near the Delaware Bay by founding a colony that predated the charter. This argument had also been made by the Dutch themselves when Maryland protested the colony in 1659. This proved to be the decisive point.
The Committee for Trade and Plantations agreed that Baltimore's charter was only for uncultivated land, and the presence of Christians in the disputed territory prior to, and after, his settlement of the region meant it could not be his. On November 7, 1685, James issued a decision which called for a compromise. He ordered that the land between the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays be divided in half, with a line west from Cape Henlopen intersecting with a line drawn south from the 40th parallel. James kept the northern border of Maryland at the 40th parallel. Calvert still did not have the border surveyed, however. In December, 1688, King James gave Penn a new and more defined charter for the Delaware holdings.
On July 20, 1701, the people of the Lower Counties in present-day Delaware petitioned Penn for a separate legislature and administrative officers from Pennsylvania's. Penn granted the request on August 28, and he commissioned a survey of the Twelve Mile Circle to determine the formal boundaries between Pennsylvania and the Lower Counties. Isaac Taylor of Pennsylvania and Thomas Piersons of New Castle were selected as the surveyors. They began their survey at a dyke in New Castle in September 1701, and ended their survey of the boundary arc in October. There were a number of errors in their survey. This was the first formal attempt to determine the boundaries created by the Twelve-Mile Circle, but far from the last.
Charles Calvert petitioned Queen Anne in 1709 to dismiss the portions of the 1683 ruling which had granted Penn land below the 40th parallel. Penn opposed Calvert's petition, and on June 23, 1710, the queen dismissed it. After the queen's ruling, both the Pennsylvania and Delaware assemblies accepted the Taylor-Piersons boundaries. This did not resolve the issue of border disputes on the ground. There were continued instances of the Maryland government granting land to Marylanders within the Delaware borders, and clashes between sheriffs in the two territories over appropriate jurisdiction. Further, the Delaware Assembly repealed its approval of the circular boundaries just one year after approving them.
Charles Calvert, the 3rd Lord Baltimore, died in 1715, and William Penn died in 1718. Benedict Calvert, 4th Baron Baltimore died just two months after his father, so the boundary dispute was carried forth by Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore on Maryland's side, and by Penn's children John, Thomas, and Richard on the Pennsylvania side.
The 1732 Agreement
The discovery that the Twelve Mile Circle did not actually intersect with the 40th parallel, and that the parallel was actually north of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania's major city, precipitated further disputes over the border. Each side attempted to surreptitiously conduct one-sided surveys of the borders. In 1722, Calvert complained to the Maryland Council that the Chief Justice of Cecil County had been arrested by Pennsylvania for "running out some lines" in the forest; Maryland, in turn, arrested Isaac Taylor, the surveyor who had earlier worked on the circle, for an incursion into Maryland territory. Conflicts between settlers such as Cresap's War and questions surrounding to which proprietor they owed taxes prompted both sides to desire a settlement. In 1731, Calvert petitioned King George II to force the Penns to agree to a formal demarcation of the boundaries. The matter was referred to the Committee for Trade and Plantations once more. Calvert insisted the boundary should remain the 40th parallel, while the Penns argued it should be placed 20 miles south of Philadelphia.
The King and Committee convinced the two sides to come to another compromise. On May 10, 1732, Calvert and the Penns signed an Article of Agreement which reaffirmed much of the 1685 ruling, but adjusted Pennsylvania's southern boundary below the 40th parallel. The agreement stated that the peninsula would be divided by a line running west from Cape Henlopen to the middle of the peninsula, and from that middle point a line would be drawn north to a point tangent to the Twelve Mile Circle. From the tangent point, a line would be drawn along the circle until it was due north of the tangent point, at which point it would go due north again until it was intersected by an east-west line which would be placed 15 miles south of Philadelphia. The map included in the agreement, however, incorrectly labeled Fenwick Island, Delaware as Cape Henlopen. That point was 19 miles south of the actual Cape Henlopen.
The Articles of Agreement also created a new Commission to oversee the implementation of the boundary agreement and the placing of monuments to formally mark the borders. Each party appointed 7 members to the Commission, which was to be led by the governors of the two colonies. The Pennsylvania Commissioners included Governor Patrick Gordon, Isaac Norris, Samuel Preston, James Logan, and Andrew Hamilton. The Maryland Commissioners included Governor Samuel Ogle, former Governor Charles Calvert, and Benjamin Tasker, Sr.
The Commission held its first meeting in Chestertown, Maryland. They subsequently met four times at New Castle's Court House, once in Joppa, Maryland, and once in Philadelphia. The Commission could not agree on several points of contention related to the Twelve Mile Circle. First, the Maryland Commissioners insisted that a circle must have a center point and they were not empowered to determine what the center point was. Second, the Maryland Commissioners insisted the circle should have a circumference of 12 miles, while the Pennsylvania Commissioners insisted it should have a radius of 12 miles. Lord Baltimore had also discovered the mapping error that resulted in Fenwick Island being used as the southernmost boundary point in the Articles of Agreement, rather than Cape Henlopen, and he protested this.