Maryland from West Virginia to Pennsylvania near the town of Hancock
at a distance of a little more than two miles.

I, myself, very nearly was born a Virginian, and would have been,
save for the fact that Maryland, after a long series of failures and
frustrations, finally won a border dispute with Virginia, and the lower
part of Somerset County, including the town of Crisfield, claimed by
both states, was awarded to Maryland just 80 years ago.

I shall not recite here the long history of Maryland's border con-
troversies with its neighbors, as interesting as it is to those of us who
cherish its glorious past. Most of you know the details of that story as
well, if not better, than I. It may be appropriate, however, to say just
a word about that episode having to do with the establishment of the
"Middle Point, " since we are here today to dedicate a marker com-
memorating that event.

By a royal edict of 1685, the Maryland proprietary was forced to
accept a division with William Penn of the land lying east of the
Chesapeake Bay. And in 1732, Charles, the fifth Lord Baltimore, agreed,
perhaps unwittingly, to a boundary adjustment under which a line
would be drawn due west from Fenwick's Island to a point at the center
of the peninsula, from which "Middle Point" the line would be extended
in a northerly direction a point hitherto agreed upon new New Castle.

This agreement, as all the others had, produced new disputes, and
when the surveyors, establishing their line from the Atlantic Ocean to the
Chesapeake Bay to find the point halfway between, reached Slaughter
Creek dividing Taylor's Island from the peninsular mainland, the
question arose as to whether they had reached the bay or whether they
should continue on the other side of the Island. This provoked another
frenzied quarrel between the Calverts and the Penns, and once more the
Calverts lost, with the result that the middle stone was placed where we
know it stands today and Maryland surrendered some more of its land.

Many of the discussions between the contending parties, it is said,
took place in the Chapel of Ease, which was the Taylor's Island branch
of Old Trinity Church.

Since that time—more than 200 years ago—old wounds have healed
and old animosities have been allayed. None of us today begrudges
Pennsylvanians the territory they acquired, regardless of what we may
think in retrospect of the means used by their forebearers to acquire it.
We are happy that William Penn's "three lower counties" became our
good neighbor, the State of Delaware, which was the first American state
to ratify our Constitution. We no longer wish to revive the controversy

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