Having settled the peculiar legal dispute, officials transferred the case to the Philadelphia District of the Federal Court, according to William Childs Purnell, assistant United States District Attorney. It was in an isolated hilly area north of Ridge Road, at the south edge of the 440-foot high Goat Hill, a summit in Chester County that descends into Maryland. 16, one of the originals placed by Mason and Dixon in 1766. While taking precise measurements, the men noticed an old British quarried stone, Milestone No. Moreover, this “disclosed that a certain deputy sheriff of Maryland transgressed his jurisdiction when he aided prohibition officers in entrapping the man,” the Sun. When the men re-ran the line south of Goat Hill for the court, “Pennsylvania won-or lost-by a margin of a couple of hundred yards,” the survey showed. That would settle the controversy, making it plain which court had jurisdiction. Government to resurvey that part of the line. 3Īs lawyers and the judge mulled over frustrating legalities, they hit upon a solution-order the U.S. He knew he resided in Cecil County because he paid taxes there, “But there was the tradition that the line ran close to his domicile,” Akers testified. Akers was unsure, the Baltimore Sun noted. Those were the legal uncertainties that puzzled the court. Did the alleged crime happen in Pennsylvania or Maryland? Who had jurisdiction? 2 However, when he appeared in court in Baltimore, legal wrangling arose over the timeworn geographical question. The raiding officers charged Akers with manufacturing alcohol, a violation of the federal Volstead Act. Nonetheless, in the roaring ‘20s, the uncertainty of whether Archie Akers produced rum north or south of the state line vexed officials. The British surveyors had settled the dispute for the Penn and Calvert families in 1768. Spicer raided a moonshine plant near Goat Hill northwest of Rising Sun in October 1928. The wrangling started after Deputy Sheriff Joseph Short and Federal Dry Agent John M. More than a century and a half after Mason and Dixon drew the boundary line separating Pennsylvania and Maryland, the question about the location of the border got entangled in a federal prohibition case. (Paul Hoffman Photo, in the collection of the Maryland Center for History & Culture) A woman stands on Milestone 15 on the Mason-Dixon Line.
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