Cresap's War - Resolution

Resolution

Following Cresap's arrest, Maryland sent a petition to King George II requesting that he intervene to restore order pending the outcome of the Chancery suit. On August 18, 1737, the king issued a proclamation instructing the governments of both colonies to cease hostilities. Sporadic violence continued, prompting both sides to petition the king for further intervention. In response, the royal Committee for Plantation Affairs organized direct negotiations between the two colonies, which resulted in the signing of a peace agreement in London on May 25, 1738. This agreement provided for an exchange of prisoners and the drawing of a provisional boundary fifteen miles south of the city of Philadelphia. Each side agreed to respect the other's authority to conduct law enforcement and grant title to land on its own side of this boundary, pending the final action of the Chancery Court.

Because Blue Rock Ferry lay well to the north of the provisional boundary, Cresap did not return to the area following his release in the prisoner exchange. In 1750, the Chancery Court upheld the validity of the 1732 agreement, which became the basis on which Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon surveyed the modern boundary (the Mason-Dixon Line) between Pennsylvania and Maryland in 1767. Today the conflict area is part of York County, Pennsylvania.

Cresap's son Michael played a prominent role in Lord Dunmore's War (1774). For this reason some historians also refer to the 1774 conflict as "Cresap's War."