MARYLAND GEOLOGICAL SURVEY                          535

or known by the name of White Marble Branch, and from thence with a
northeast line, to the extent of this province, shall be, and is hereby con-
stituted founded and incorporated into a county of this province, by the
name of Queen Anne's county and to have and enjoy all rights benefits,
privileges, equal with the other counties of this province.

The eastern limits of the province of Maryland remained unsettled
during the years of controversy between the proprietors of Maryland and
those of Pennsylvania who had acquired control of Delaware until the
•Chancery decision of 1750, and no line was run to indicate its location
until a decade later when the local surveyors who immediately pre-
ceded Mason and Dixon cut a vista along the boundary as it now is in
their efforts to establish a true tangent line. The boundary was not
marked until 1765, when Mason and Dixon erected the well-known
monuments which had been imported from England. Before the settle-
ment of the boundary there had been little or no development of the dis-
puted territory which lay midway between the waters of the Delaware and
the Chesapeake and little inconvenience had arisen from the uncertainty
legarding the position of the State boundary.

Scarcely ten years after the final settlement of the eastern boundary,
portions of Queen Anne's and Dorchester counties were erected into
the new county of Caroline. According to the Act⁸² the boundary line
between Queen Anne's and Caroline counties was to run from the inter-
section of the State boundary with

" the main road that leads from the Beaver-dam causeway to Dover-town
in Kent county, upon Delaware, thence with the said road to the Long marsh,
thence with the said marsh and stream of the branch of Tuckahoe creek to
Tuckahoe bridge, thence with the said creek to Great Choptank river."

According to this boundary all the territory lying between the main
branch of the Choptank on the east and Tuckahoe bridge on the west,
which had formerly been a part of Queen Anne's county was taken from
it and given to Caroline.

QUEEN ANNE'S COUNTY ELECTION DISTRICTS.

1798  Ch. 115. County divided into 3 election districts.

1799  Ch. 48. Confirms Acts of 1798 Ch. 115.

³² Laws of Maryland 1773, Chapter 10, Liber R G. Fol. 249.