Jeremiah Dixon

Who's Jeremiah Dixon, I hear you ask!

Well if you've ever heard of the famous Mason-Dixon Line, or Mark Knopfler's song, Sailing to Philadelphia, then you've heard - albeit it unknowingly - about Jeremiah Dixon.

Jeremiah Dixon (July 27, 1733 – January 22, 1779) was a surveyor who is perhaps best known for his work with Charles Mason, from 1763 to 1767, in determining what was later called the Mason-Dixon Line.

Dixon was born in Cockfield, near Bishop Auckland, in 1733, the fifth of seven children, to George Dixon and Mary Hunter. His father was a wealthy Quaker coal mine owner; his mother was said to have been the "cleverest woman" that ever married into the Dixon family.  This intelligence certainly seemed to show itself in her children, especially Jeremiah.

Jeremiah became interested in astronomy and mathematics during his education at John Kipling's school at Barnard Castle. Early in life he made acquaintances with mathematician William Emerson, and astronomers John Bird and Thomas Wright.

Jeremiah served as assistant to Charles Mason in 1761 when the Royal Society selected Mason to observe the transit of Venus from Sumatra.   Their passage to Sumatra was delayed, and they landed instead at the Cape of Good Hope where the transit was observed on June 6, 1761. Dixon returned to the Cape once again with Nevil Maskelyne's clock to work on experiments with gravity.

Dixon and Mason signed an agreement in 1763 with the proprietors of Pennsylvania and Maryland, Thomas
Penn and Frederick Calvert, sixth Baron Baltimore, to assist with resolving a boundary dispute between the two provinces. They arrived in Philadelphia in November 1763 and began work towards the end of the year.

The survey was not complete until late 1766, following which they stayed on to measure a degree of Earth's meridian on the Delmarva Peninsula in Maryland, on behalf of the Royal Society. They also made a number of gravity measurements with the same instrument that Dixon had used with Maskelyne in 1761. Before returning to England in 1768, they were both admitted to the American Society for Promoting Useful Knowledge, in Philadelphia.

Dixon sailed to Norway in 1769 with William Bayly to observe another transit of Venus. The two split up, with Dixon at Hammerfest Island and Bayly at North Cape, in order to minimize the possibility of inclement weather obstructing their measurements.

Following their return to England, Dixon resumed his work as a surveyor in Durham.  Evidence of his skill as a draughtsman can be seen in a plan of the park of Auckland Castle, completed in 1772.  All Jeremiah's maps are beautifully decorated, and works of art in themselves. 


Jeremiah died unmarried in Cockfield, January 22, 1779.

To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the commencement of the Mason-Dixon survey in 1763, the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle will host an exhibition of items such as model ships, surveying equipment and historic maps.  It will also feature a slave whip which Jeremiah kept as a trophy.   Jeremiah saw the owner thrashing a slave with the whip, took it from him, thrashed the owner with it and kept the whip. Artefacts from the native Americans who worked alongside Jeremiah will also be on show.

Jeremiah Dixon: Scientist, Surveyor and Stargazer  will run from Sat 27 Apr 13 - Sun 06 Oct 13.

Jeremiah Dixon also appears in Thomas Pynchon's 1997 novel Mason & Dixon.   The song Sailing to Philadelphia from Mark Knopfler's album of the same name, also refers to Mason and Dixon, and was inspired by Pynchon's book.

I love this song!

Here's the original version with Mark Knopfler and James Taylor

and here's a live version with Mark only

Enjoy :D

Only You - Lorna Peel

Today I'm delighted to welcome guest blogger Lorna Peel to talk about her debut novel, Only You, published by Entranced Publishing.


In the first of two guest posts, Lorna tells us about what inspired her to write Only You.  But first, here's the blurb...


Jane Hollinger is single, divorced, and the wrong side of thirty – as she puts it. Her friends are pressuring her to dive back into London’s dating pool, but she’s content with her quiet life as a genealogy teacher.

Robert Armstrong is every woman’s fantasy: handsome, charming, rich and famous. When he asks her to meet him, she convinces herself it’s because he needs her help with a mystery in his family tree. Soon she realizes he’s interested in more than her genealogical expertise. Now the paparazzi want a piece of Jane too.

Can Jane handle living – and loving – in the spotlight?

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Wouldn’t it be fantastic to be in a relationship with someone famous? Wouldn’t it be great, with parties and premiers, and having your picture in the papers and gossip magazines?

But what would it be really like to be in a relationship with someone famous but you wish they weren’t because you are a private person who likes a quiet life? Could you love them enough to be able to put up with all the intrusions?

It’s a dilemma and it’s why I created Jane Hollinger so she can try and decide.

Poor Jane. Her self esteem is in the gutter because her husband left her for a client. She lives alone with her books and huge DVD collection and doesn’t know if she ever wants to date again. It’s been so long since she’s dated that she’s not even sure she remembers how to do it properly and the prospect of going out with someone from the dating website her sister and best friend subscribed her to fills her with dread. Why can’t they just leave her alone? She does go out in the evenings – but it’s to teach family history evening classes at the Local Education Centre. Little does Jane know that romance will strike when she least expects it. But will she be able to cope with being in a relationship with a man she’s only dreamed of and the British press?


Readers can find out more on the web at


Twitter

My website

Facebook

Pininterest


Thanks Elizabeth, for having me on your blog!

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Thank you, Lorna :)  Only You sounds an intriguing read and I look forward to finding out more in your second blog post here on 8th April.

Radio Gaga

A very warm welcome to the blog today to my fellow coffee crew author, Nell Dixon.

Nell has a brilliant new book out - Radio Gaga - and she's here to tell us more about it!  ( I love the cover by the way :D)

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Radio Gaga is my first mainstream single title release for quite a while now. It’s a story I’m quite excited about as it’s a fun, upbeat chick lit suspense.

I’d finished the book and was deciding what I should do with it when the story broke all over the news about the Australian radio presenters who had a practical joke go badly wrong! Talk about weird timing! Chloe, in Radio Gaga also has things go wrong for her but I don’t want to spoil the surprise.

Here's the blurb...

Over the airwaves everyone can hear you scream!

Radio researcher and part-time presenter Chloe Lark is certain her big show biz break is just around the corner. Live it Up radio may not be the big time, but surely - one day soon - fame will come her way. And, if she could convince the hunky guy next door to give her a chance, her love life might improve too.

Ex-soldier Ben isn’t sure if his new ‘Z’ list celebrity neighbour is crazy or on medication. Either way he’s looking for a quiet life out of the spotlight. The last thing he needs is an accident prone media hungry blonde complete with mystery stalker. Problem is - Chloe doesn’t seem to have received that particular memo…



And here’s an excerpt!


I knew it wasn’t burglars when I noticed the large empty space next to the bay window. No self-respecting burglar would break into someone’s home just to steal a life size cardboard cut-out of Darth Vader would they?
 
No, it wasn’t burglars who’d nicked Darth or who’d cleared the shelf of the Queen CDs. It was Neil. He’d finally moved out, and taken Freddie Mercury and the Dark Lord with him as he went.

For a moment I stood trying to decide how I felt. Angry? Broken-hearted? In the time it took me to cross the room, enter the kitchen and dump my handbag on the worktop I decided my overwhelming feeling was relief.

Neil had raided the kitchen too: his state of the art coffee maker which I hadn’t been allowed to touch was gone, along with his juicer and his super fancy wok. Only a couple of spilled coffee beans on the countertop showed where they had been. I looked at the clippie magnet on the fridge to see if he’d left me a note. We’d always left messages for each other one there. A few months back they had been little love notes with kisses and pictures of hearts. Now the only thing on there was the ratty message I’d left for him yesterday asking him to pick up some milk on his way home.

I walked back through the lounge to what had once been our bedroom. The wardrobe doors were open showing the empty hangers and his rack of immaculately arranged ties had gone. My mobile vibrated in my trouser pocket telling me I had a text as I sank down onto the edge of the bed. I knew what it would be before I even fished it out of my pocket.

‘Chloe, guess you know by now have moved out, thought would be better this way. U know it wasn’t working, sorry, N’


© Nell Dixon 2013

Available from Amazon.com

And Amazon UK

Readers can find me on the web at:

Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/nelldixonauthor

Twitter - @NellDixon

Blog - http://nelldixonrw.blogspot.co.uk/

Website - http://www.nelldixon.com

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Thanks for visiting the blog, Nell - Radio Gaga is a fabulous read and I'd urge everyone to check it out! 

Dido Elizabeth Belle

 There is a new film coming soon (Belle) inspired by the life of Dido Elizabeth Belle, the first black woman to be introduced to high society in Georgian times.

Dido Elizabeth Belle (1761-1804) was an illegitimate daughter of Admiral Sir John Lindsay and an African woman known as Belle. Very little is known about Belle except that she was biracial. Her daughter Dido was sent to live in the household of William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, who was Lindsay's uncle and thus Dido's great-uncle.

Dido Elizabeth Belle was born around 1761. She was baptised in 1766 at St. George's Church, Bloomsbury. Her father, John Lindsay, was at the time a  Royal Navy captain on HMS Trent, a warship based in theWest Indies that took part in the capture of Havana from the Spanish in 1762.

It has been suggested that Dido's mother was an enslaved African on board one of the Spanish ships captured during this battle, but the dates are inconsistent and Dido's baptism record shows that she was born while Lindsay was in the West Indies and that her mother's name was Maria Belle.  As Dido was illegitmate, she did not use the name Lindsay and was therefore called Dido Elizabeth Belle.

 Lindsay sent Dido to his uncle, the Earl of Mansfield, who lived with his family at Kenwood House in Hampstead, which was then just outside London.  The Earl and his wife were childless and were already raising Dido's cousin, Lady Elizabeth Murray, after her mother's death.   Dido was about the same age as Elizabeth and it's possible that Mansfield took Dido in to be Elizabeth's playmate and, later, her personal attendant.

1779 painting of Dido Elizabeth Belle and Elizabeth Murray*

* Painting by an unknown artist, formerly attributed to Zoffany.  From the collection of the Earl of Mansfield, Scone Palace, Perth.

Despite the Earl's revulsion for slavery, the social conventions of his household were discriminatory. Dido would not dine with the rest of the family, especially if they had guests, but joined the ladies for coffee afterwards in the drawing room. As she grew older, she took responsibility for the dairy and poultry yards at Kenwood, and she also helped Mansfield with his correspondence - an indication that she was fairly well educated. The running of the dairy and poultry yard would have been a typical occupation for ladies of the gentry, but helping her uncle with his correspondence was less usual, since this was normally done by a secretary or a male clerk.

Dido also received an annual allowance of £30 10s, several times the wages of a domestic servant; by contrast, Elizabeth received around £100, but she was after all an heiress in her own right, and Dido, quite apart from her race, was illegitimate in a time and place when great social stigma usually accompanied such status.

A 1779 painting by an unknown painter (above) depicts Dido alongside Elizabeth, carrying exotic fruit and wearing a turban with a large feather and a large pearl earring.  The painting, which hangs at Scone Palace in Scotland, is owned by the present Earl Mansfield and in 2007 was exhibited in Kenwood during an exhibition to run alongside events marking the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act 1807.

In his role as Lord Chief Justice, Lord Mansfield was instrumental in bringing about the legal end of slavery with his ruling on the Sommersett case in 1772, where he held that slavery was unlawful in England (although this did not end slave trafficking altogether).  It's not difficult to suppose that his great niece Dido Elizabeth influenced his thinking.

Dido's father died without legitimate heirs in 1788, leaving £1000 to be split between his three illegitimate children, one of which was Dido.  When the Earl died in 1793, he left Dido £500 as an outright sum and a £100 annuity in his will, and officially confirmed her freedom.

Little is known about Dido's life after she left Kenwood, but on 5th December 1793, she married John Davinier (very likely a steward at Kenwood) at St. George's in Hanover Square.  The Daviniers had three sons, twins Charles and John (baptised 8th May 1795) and William Thomas (baptised 26th January 1802).

Dido died in 1804 and was buried in July that year at St George's Fields, a burial-ground close to what is now Bayswater Road; in the 1970s, however, the site was redeveloped and her grave was moved. She was survived by her husband, who later remarried and had two more children.

Dido's fascinating story will be coming to the screen in the film Belle, directed by Amma Assante and starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Belle, Matthew Goode as Captain Sir John Lindsay, Tom Wilkinson as the Earl of Mansfield and Sam Reid as John Davinier.

Production still - Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Dido Elizabeth Belle

Production still - Sarah Gadon as Lady Elizabeth/Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Dido

 
The film is now in post-production and locations include Oxford, Osterley Park, Isle of Man and Pinewood Studios.

I can't wait to see it!


 

Return to Blandings

 It will be party time at Hanbury Towers on Sunday night.

No, not the usual bread roll throwing competition but a joyful charleston around the ha-ha to herald a new TV adapation of that literary genius and one of my  favourite authors,  P.G. Wodehouse *g*

A six-part series of Blandings starts on Sunday, based on Wodehouse's much-loved accounts of the fictional life and times of the inhabitants of Blandings Castle.  The Blandings stories follow the fortunes of the amiable but befuddled Clarence Threepwood, 9th Earl of Emsworth and his beloved pig, the Empress of Blandings.

Blandings has a primetime evening viewing slot and an all-star cast, including Timothy Spall as Lord Emsworth, Jennifer Saunders as his formidable sister Connie, Jack Farthing as Lord E's hapless son Freddy and Mark Williams as the imperious butler Beach.  David Walliams makes a guest appearance in two episodes as Rupert Baxter, Clarence’s new secretary.

Blandings will star Jack Farthing, Jennifer Saunders, Timothy Spall and Mark Williams. Photograph: BBC

I have High Hopes so dear BBC, don't let me down with this new adaptation featuring some of my favourite Wodehouse characters and stories.  The series is adapted by Guy Andrews (Lost in Austen) and directed by Paul Seed (Just William) which augurs well.

And if Blandings is anywhere as good as Fry and Laurie's Jeeves and Wooster, it will be a job well done, old bean ;0)

Here's a taster on YouTube - unfortunately I can't embed for some reason :-/

Lights, Camera, Poltergeist!

A Happy New Year to everyone!

Let's get 2013 off with a bang..or should that be a bump in the night? *g* with a guest post from fellow Coffee Crew member, Astraea Press author and good friend Nell Dixon.

Nell's latest release (her 21st title, which is just amazing!) is Lights, Camera, Poltergeist! 

Here's Nell to tell us more...

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Thank you so much for inviting me to talk about my latest release from Astraea Press.

Lights, Camera, Poltergeist! will be my 21st title release! So a kind of coming of age.

For those who haven’t met me before my name is Nell Dixon and I’m a UK author based in the Black Country, a small region which is more or less dab bang in the middle of the UK. I write for a number of publishers in the US and the UK and have been fortunate enough to twice win the UK’s prestigious romance prize for category length fiction. I’m the only person to have won twice.

Lights, Camera, Poltergeist! is set in Scotland and I thought it might be fun to tell you a few fun facts about Scotland. Author Bram Stoker is said to have taken the inspiration for his novel, "Dracula," from Slains Castle in Cruden Bay, which is wild and remote.

Slains Castle (image from Wikimedia Commons, Attribution Revelation Space at en.Wikipedia)                  

Scotland has many myths and one is the selkie. This is a creature in the shape of a seal that can turn into a beautiful woman. On the fashion front, modern kilts have up to eight meters of material. A modern take on the kilt is to use leather, instead of traditional tartan.  You can read more here.

Lights, Camera, Poltergeist!

Things don’t just go bump in the night, sometimes they throw tea cups!

As the presenter for Ghost Uk, the leading TV show investigating paranormal activity, Fae thought she’d seen it all. Until a Valentine’s Eve live show from Scotland’s Fingelly Manor upsets both her preconceptions and her love life.



And here's a wee taster!

John watched as she headed out of the room. Lately, it seemed he couldn't say or do the right thing, where Fae was concerned. He wasn't looking forward to the evening ahead of them any more than she was. Until Tim had sprung his hare-brained scheme for a live Valentine's show on them, John had planned a very different kind of evening with Fae.

Tonight he should have been enjoying an intimate dinner with her at their favourite restaurant, hoping he could put some romance back into their relationship. Instead they were to freeze to death in a cavernous and dingy dining room with the rest of the production team. Worse still, that lecherous creep, Giles, would be ogling Fae at every opportunity.

The room seemed to be growing colder by the minute. The elderly woman finished her ministrations by the fireplace, and a dull orange glow filled the hearth, accompanied by lots of smoke.

The tech staff had gone from the corridor as John crossed the room to stand closer to the meagre fire. No doubt they had slipped off to the kitchen in an attempt to scrounge up more mugs of tea.

He was tempted to go join them, but he really wanted to finish setting up the lighting and placing the motion sensors first.

Silence hugged him like a shroud as he concentrated on tightening the final connection. His breath formed ghostly clouds in the chill air. The fire next to him offered no more heat than a candle.

A growing sense of unease forced its way into his senses, raising goosebumps on his skin. John lifted his head, certain he was no longer alone in the room. At first he couldn't see the cause of the sensation.

A change in the shadows in the far corner of the room, next to a dusty case containing a long-dead fox, caught his gaze. A soft snicking sound followed, like a door being closed quietly. He blinked, unsure if he had imagined the momentary distortion in the oak panelling. 


© Nell Dixon 2013




Lights, Camera, Poltergeist! is available now from all good etailers, including Amazon.com  and Amazon UK


And why not try Cue Me In? which also features Fae, John and the Ghost UK team?  Available at Amazon.com and Amazon UK and other good etailers.

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Thanks Nell - both sound great reads to kick off 2013 with :)

You can find out more about Nell and her books at her website and her blog.