Neither the settlers nor the General Court knew exactly how much land they were requesting, or granting. The petition was for all the land south of the Charles River, but maps from the early 1630s show the river ending somewhere near modern day Dedham. It had never been explored by colonial settlers beyond that point. Instead, the colony gave them over "two hundred square miles of virgin wilderness, complete with lakes, hills, forests, meadows, Indians, and a seemingly endless supply of rocks and wolves." There were a number of surveys undertaken over the years, beginning with one in 1638 undertaken by John Rogers and Jonathan Fairbanks, but the issue was not settled until the United States Supreme Court took up a case in 1846 that involved a dispute between the border of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
