Did Lake Erie exist in the Pennsylvania Colony?

Answer 1

The Boundary and Borders of the western lands were ill defined with competing claims that took no small effort to negotiate final settlement. For example Virginia clained the lower left hand corner of Pennsylvania until 1780. Maryland claimed much of southern Pennsylvania until the Mason Dixon line was established in 1767. Connecticut had a claim on northern Pennsylvania until 1786. Pennsylvania had a claim on much of eastern New York until 1774. The final shift was the purchase of the Lake Erie Triangle from New York in 1792.

Lake Erie existed but who it belonged to and at what point the final map would be drawn was in dispute for many years. Neat lines drawn on a map such as those in the four corners region were not readily available with the surveying technology available in early Colonial America. The DelMarVa peninsula is an excellent example of political expediency as opposed to good cartography. The founding fathers desperately needed a good GPS system.