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Maryland was one of the thirteen colonies that revolted against British rule in the American Revolution. George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, applied to Charles I for a new royal charter for what was to become the Province of Maryland, which was at the time the northern part of Virginia. George Calvert died in April 1632, but a charter for "Maryland Colony" (in Latin, "Terra Maria") was granted to his son, Cæcilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, on June 20, 1632. The new colony was named in honor of Henrietta Maria, Queen Consort of Charles. Originally, based on an incorrect map, the royal charter granted Maryland the Potomac River and territory northward to the fortieth parallel. This was found to be a problem, because the northern boundary would put Philadelphia, the major city in Pennsylvania, within Maryland. The Calvert family, which controlled Maryland, and the Penn family, which controlled Pennsylvania, engaged two surveyors, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, to survey what became known as the Mason-Dixon line which would form the boundary between their two colonies and would become the dividing line between North and South. For a state as small as it is, Maryland posses a great variety of topography. It ranges from sandy dunes dotted with seagrass in the east, to low marshlands teeming with water moccassins and large baldcypress near the bay, to gently rolling hills of oak forest in the piedmont region, and mountain pine groves in the west. Maryland is bounded on the north by Pennsylvania; on the west by West Virginia; on the north and east by Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean; and on the south, across the Potomac River, by Virginia. It shares a border near the center of the state along the Potomac with Washington, DC. The Chesapeake Bay nearly bisects the state, and the counties east of the bay are known collectively as the Eastern Shore. A portion of extreme western Maryland in Garrett County is drained by the Youghiogheny River as part of the watershed of the Mississippi River. The highest point in Maryland is Backbone Mountain, which is the southwest corner of Garrett County, near the border with West Virginia and near the headwaters of the North Branch of the Potomac. In western Maryland, about two-thirds of the way across the state line, is a point at which the state of Maryland is only two miles (3 km) wide. This geographical curiosity is located near the small town of Hancock. The Delmarva Peninsula is a geographic term for the Eastern Shore counties of Maryland, the state of Delaware, and two counties of Virginia, which all together form a long extension down the Atlantic seaboard. One of the most noted features of Delmarva is Maryland's Assateague Island, on the Atlantic, with its herd of wild ponies accustomed to the seashore.
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