The Social Life of Maps in America, 1750-1860

THE SOCIAL LIFE OF MAPS IN AMERICA, 1750–1860

The SOCIAL LIFE of MAPS in America, 1750–1860

MARTIN BRÜCKNER

Published by the OMOHUNDRO INSTITUTE OF EARLY AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE, Williamsburg, Virginia, and the UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS, Chapel Hill

Publication of this book has been assisted by a generous grant from the College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of English at the University of Delaware.

The Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture is sponsored by the College of William and Mary. On November 15, 1996, the Institute adopted the present name in honor of a bequest from Malvern H. Omohundro, Jr.

© 2017 The University of North Carolina Press

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.

Cover image Courtesy, Winterthur Museum, Hand Screen, L’AMERIQUE/DESCRIPTION DE L’AMERIQUE by Jean Lattre, 1779–80, Paris, France, Ink, Watercolor, Laid paper, Pasteboard, Wood, Brass, Bequest of Henry Francis du Pont, 1965.2116

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Brückner, Martin, 1963– author.

Title: The social life of maps in America, 1750–1860 / Martin Brückner.

Description: Williamsburg, Virginia : Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture ; Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017020343| ISBN 9781469632612 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469632612 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Cartography—United States—History. | Cartographers—United States—History.

Classification: LCC GA105.3 .B77 2017 | DDC 526.0973/09034—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017020343

For my Parents,

HANNELORE and SIEGFRIED BRÜCKNER

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book had its beginnings in the short but perplexing question, What did early American maps really do? Working to find answers turned into a long journey in the course of which many institutions and people provided support, guidance, and encouragement. The book found its first legs thanks to the support of a Winterthur Museum and Library fellowship sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Program in Early American Economy and Society fellowship at the Library Company of Philadelphia, and a MacLean Fellowship in the History of Cartography at the Newberry Library, Chicago. A general university research grant and sabbatical leave from the University of Delaware were crucial for completing its first draft.

The book was helped along by many colleagues and their invitations to think out loud about maps and their place in early American society. I am grateful to Jim Akerman at the Newberry Library and its public lecture series in American History and Culture, including the 18th Nebenzahl Lectures in the History of Cartography on The War of 1812 and American Cartography; Oliver Scheiding, the Social and Cultural Studies Institute (SOCUM), and the American Studies Lecture Series at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany; Wendy Bellion, Monica Dominguez, and the participants at their symposium Objects in Motion: Art and Material Culture across Colonial North America at the University of Delaware; Daniel Richter and the McNeil Center for Early American Studies; Chris Grasso, Peter Mancall, and the William and Mary Quarterly–Early Modern Studies Institute workshop Grounded Histories: Land, Landscape, and Environment in Early North America at the Huntington Library; Cathy Matson and the Program in Early American Economy and Society’s symposium on lithography in Philadelphia; Peter Stallybrass, Jerry Singerman, and the History of Material Texts Seminar, University of Pennsylvania; Ralph Bauer and the interdisciplinary forum on Geographies of Desire at the University of Maryland; Billy Smith and Catherine Dunlop at Montana State University and their memorable Symposium, Mapping History: New Directions in Interdisciplinary Research; Valerie Traub and The Culture of Cartography Symposium, University of Michigan; Scott Gordon, Emily Rau, and the Gipson Institute for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Lehigh University; Jordana Dym and the John B. Moore Documentary Studies Collaborative at Skidmore College; Jennifer Blessman, Leah Michelle Thomas, and the Fry-Jefferson Map Society at the Library of Virginia; Howard Lange and Thomas Sander, Washington Map Society; John Docktor and David Buisseret, Chicago Map Society; and Barbara Drebing Kauffman, Philadelphia Map Society.

All my work on American maps would not have been possible without getting to know them firsthand. For this, I am indebted to archivists and curators, librarians and conservators whose help and friendship has made working with maps a wonderfully rewarding experience. At the Winterthur Museum, I had the good fortune to work closely with Linda Eaton, Catherine Dann Roeber, Emily Guthrie, Jeannie Solensky, Leslie Grigsby, Joan Irving, John Krill, Rosemary Krill, Rich McKinstry, Amy Marks Delany, Nat Caccamo, Laura Johnson, Alana Staiti, and Heather Henson; I am grateful not only for their kind and constant support, but, thanks to the stewardship of David Roselle, I was able to work with them as visiting curator when creating the exhibition Common Destinations: Maps in the American Experience (commondestinations.winterthur.org). At the Library Company of Philadelphia, I am always grateful to Jim Green, Cornelia King, Erika Piola, Nicole Joniec, and Sarah Weatherwax for sharing their knowledge and advice. At the Newberry Library, I benefited immensely from the expertise offered by Jim Akerman, Diane Dillon, and Peter Nekola. At the MacLean Collection, I owe Barry MacLean a big thanks for his generosity and Tom Hall, the collection’s map curator par excellence, for his hospitality and guidance. Regarding the American Antiquarian Society, words are not enough to express my gratitude for all the help I have received over the years from Gigi Barnhill, Paul Erickson, Marie Lamoureux, Lauren Hewes, and Jackie Penny. For behind-the-scenes visits, thanks go to Robert L. Giannini at the Independence National Historical Park and to Laura Keim at Historic Stenton Hall in Germantown. Last but not least, my discussion of American maps was made possible in large part thanks to David Rumsey and his incomparable, ever-expanding online map archive, the David Rumsey Map Collection.

For many conversations about all things cartographic over the years, I am grateful to Hester Blum, David Bosse, Michael Buehler, Edward Dahl, Marcy Dinius, Max Edelson, Matthew Edney, Ritchie Garrison, Sandra Gustafson, Bernard Herman, Sandy Isenstadt, Laura Keim, Cathy Kelly, Ed Larkin, Roderick MacDonald, Michelle MacDonald, Ricardo Padron, Margaret Pritchard, Jennifer Roberts, Neil Safier, Susan Schulten, Eric Slauter, Chloe Wigston Smith, and Anne Verplanck. Many more will be thanked throughout the book for sharing clues and other references. I owe special thanks to those who have read early chapters or book sections: Wendy Bellion, Amy Earls, Cathy Matson, and Mary Pedley. Thanks to my research assistants Kristen Doyle Highland, Matt Paparone, and Dan Barlekamp. At the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, I had the great fortune to work once again with Fredrika J. Teute, now editor emerita, who read and critiqued the completed manuscript at a crucial moment. I have benefited from comments made by two anonymous readers and the editorial team at the Institute: thanks to Paul Mapp for providing a final, incisive reading and to Kathy Burdette for editing the manuscript and overseeing the fact-checking of its many, many notes. Thinking beyond conversations and readings, I am particularly grateful for the long-time friendship and constant inspiration offered by Fredrika Teute, Patricia Crain, and Oliver Scheiding—without their continued interest, intense questions, and unceasing support, this project would have faltered long ago.

Along the way, this book was made possible by the mostly uncartographic support from friends and family. I am especially thankful to Armin Specht Rebholz and Corinna Ihle, who provided a roof and a table in the wonderful oasis of Hochborn, Germany; to Matthias Ohr and Shannon Coulter, who opened their home and heart in Philadelphia; to my brothers, Carsten and Rainer, and their families for simply being there; to the late Michael (Timo) Gilmore, whose mentorship is sorely missed; to Ellen and the late Drury Pifer for mirth and good company; to Faith Garrett for all her help; to David and Marilyn Poole for offering the relief of an apple orchard and blueberry patch at Lake Michigan; and to my parents, Hannelore and Siegfried Brückner, for their loving support—this book is dedicated to them. My daughters, Corinna and Juliana, grew up along with the book: they gracefully accepted the hours I spent away, developing their own charts for navigating the world. Kristen Poole made everything possible with her thoughtfulness and compassion, humor, and love.

Parts of Chapters 3, 4, and 5 were published in Winterthur Portfolio, XLVIII (2014), 139–162; the volume Cultural Narratives: Textuality and Performance in American Culture before 1900, ed. Sandra M. Gustafson and Caroline Sloat (South Bend, Ind., 2010); and my edited volume Early American Cartographies (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2011). Brief sections of the introduction to Part 2 appeared in American Art, XXIX, no. 2 (Summer 2015), 2–9; and small parts of Chapter 6 appeared in Georgia Barnhill and Martha McNamara, eds., New Views of New England: Studies in Material and Visual Culture, 1680–1830 (Boston, 2012).

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

List of Illustrations

PREFACE. Introducing the Social Life of American Maps

PART ONE: AMERICAN MAPWORKS

1 THE ARTISANAL MAP, 1750–1815:

Workshops and Shopkeepers from Lewis Evans to Samuel Lewis

2 THE MANUFACTURED MAP, 1790–1830:

Centralization and Integration from Mathew Carey to John Melish

3 THE INDUSTRIAL MAP, 1820–1860:

Innovation and Diversification from Henry S. Tanner to S. Augustus Mitchell

PART TWO: THE SPECTACLE OF MAPS

4 PUBLIC GIANTS:

Re-Staging Power and the Theatricality of Maps

5 PRIVATE PROPERTIES:

Ornamental Maps and the Decorum of Interiority

6 SELF-MADE SPECTACLES:

The Look of Maps and Cartographic Visualcy

PART THREE: THE MOBILIZATION OF MAPS

7 LOOKING SMALL AND MADE TO GO:

The Atlas and the Rise of the Cartographic Vade Mecum

8 CARTOGRAPHIC TRANSFERS:

Education and the Art of Mappery

EPILOGUE. Cartoral Arts and Material Metaphors

Appendix 1: Price Table—Maps and Their Sales Prices, 1755–1860

Appendix 2: Inventory of John Melish Geographer and Map Publisher

Graphs

Index

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

COLOR PLATES (after page 124).

1.     Edward Savage, The Washington Family, 1798–1805

2.     Mother Holding Thomas Carew Hunt Martin as Infant, June 22, 1857

3.     Detail, Map of Brazil, in S. Augustus Mitchell, A New Universal Atlas, 1849

4.     Detail, Map of Brazil, in S. Augustus Mitchell, Jr., Mitchell’s New General Atlas, 1860

5.     John Melish, Map of the United States, 1816

6.     Edward H. Ensign, Ornamental Map of the United States and Mexico, 1851

7.     John Mitchell, A Map of the British and French Dominions in North America, 1755

8.     Robert P. Smith, The Washington Map of the United States, 1861

9.     Ensign, Bridgman & Fanning, The Cottage Ornament, 1856

10.   Gaylord Watson, The American Republic and Rail-Road Map of the United States, 1867

FIGURES.

1.     Trevor McClurg, Home Again (lith. Dominique Fabronius), 1866

2.     Edward Savage, The Washington Family, 1798–1805

3.     Benjamin Johns Harrison, Annual Fair of the American Institute at Niblo’s Garden, ca. 1845

4.     Samuel Lewis, A New and Correct Map of the United States of North America, 1816

5.     Proposals by Emmor Kimber . . . for Publishing by Subscription, A New and Correct Map of the United States of North America . . . by Samuel Lewis, Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, 1815

6.     Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson, A Map of the Most Inhabited Part of Virginia, 1755

7.     Lewis Evans, A General Map of the Middle British Colonies, 1755

8.     Lewis Evans, A Map of Pensilvania, New-Jersey, New-York, 1749

9.     Abraham Bosse, Rolling press with map, De la maniere de graver, 1745

10.   Silk copy of Lewis Evans, A General Map of the Middle British Colonies, ca. 1755

11.   Robert Sayer and John Bennett, The American Military Pocket Atlas, 1776

12.   [Nicholas Scull], To the Mayor, Recorder, Aldermen, Common Council, and Freemen of Philadelphia This Plan of the Improved Part of the City, 1762

13.   Samuel Lewis, The Travellers Guide: A New and Correct Map of the United States Including Great Portions of the Missouri Territory, 1819

14.   Samuel Lewis, A Correct Map of the United States with the West Indies, 1817

15.   Samuel Lewis, A Map of the United States Compiled Chiefly from the State Maps, 1795

16.   John Filson, This Map of Kentucke, 1784

17.   [Samuel Lewis], Kentucky. Reduced from Elihu Barker’s Large Map, in Carey’s American Atlas, 1796

18.   [Samuel Lewis], Kentuckey, in Carey’s American Pocket Atlas, 1796

19.   South East Corner of Third and Market Streets, Philadelphia, in William Birch, Views of Philadelphia, 1800

20.   Mathew Carey, Carey’s General Atlas, 1814

21.   John Melish, Map of the Seat of War in North America, 1813

22.   John Melish, A Map of the United States of America, in The Sine Qua Non, 1814

23.   John Melish, A Diagram of the United States, 1822

24.   John Melish, Elementary Map, in Melish’s Universal School Atlas, 1816

25.   John Melish, Map of the Pilgrim’s Progress, 1822

26.   John Melish, Map of the United States, 1816

27.   Ruthven Press, frontispiece, Typographia, 1837

28.   Melish’s shop at 121 Chesnut Street, in Rae’s Philadelphia Pictorial Directory, 1851

29.   Trade card, from John Melish, Prospectus of a Six Sheet Map of the United States, 1816

30.   John Melish, United States of America, in C. V. Lavoisne, A Complete Genealogical, Historical, Chronological, and Geographical Atlas, 1821

31.   Henry S. Tanner, Map of North America, 1825

32.   S. Augustus Mitchell, Mitchell’s National Map of the American Republic, 1843

33.   Henry S. Tanner, United States of America, 1829

34.   The Paper Making Machine, in Richard Herring, A Practical Guide to the Varieties and Relative Values of Paper, 1856

35.   Broadside, Wagner & McGuigan, Steam Lithographic Establishment, 1850

36.   Patent Single SMALL Cylinder Printing Machine, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1864

37.   Trade card, Edward Mendel. Lithographer, Engraver, and Map Publisher, 1858–1868

38.   Detail, Map of Brazil, in S. Augustus Mitchell, A New Universal Atlas, 1849

39.   Detail, Map of Brazil, in S. Augustus Mitchell, Jr., Mitchell’s New General Atlas, 1860

40.   William Chapin, Ornamental Map of the United States, 1853

41.   Edward H. Ensign, Ornamental Map of the United States and Mexcio, 1851

42.   Frederick Pilliner, A Panoramic Representation of the Interior of the Crystal Palace, New York, Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, 1854

43.   J. Calvin Smith, Colton’s Map of the United States of America Including Canada and a Large Portion of Texas, 1854

44.   Henry Popple, A Map of the British Empire in America, 1733

45.   John Mitchell, A Map of the British and French Dominions in North America, 1755

46.   Edward Savage, after Robert Edge Pine, Congress Voting Independence, ca. 1788–1795

47.   Detail of Corps de Garde van Hollandsche Officers; Corps de garde des officiers Hollandois, 1859

48.   Abraham Bradley, Map of the United States Exhibiting Post Roads and Distances, 1796

49.   John Wallis, The United States of America . . . Agreeable to the Peace of 1783, 1783

50.   Meeting Room, with Colton’s Missionary Map of the World (ca. 1850) and Colton’s [Map of] the World (1850)

51.   J. H. Colton and D. Griffing Johnson, Colton’s Illustrated and Embellished Steel Plate Map of the World on Mercator’s Projection, 1857

52.   James T. Lloyd, Diagram of Lloyd’s Patent Revolving Double Maps, 1865

53.   Map Case No. 2, in J. L. Smith, Catalogue and Price-List of Maps, Atlases, Globes, and Other Geographical Works, ca. 1874

54.   Public High School, Hartford, in Henry Barnard, School Architecture, 1850

55.   Mr. Alcott’s School-Room, in Elizabeth Peabody, Records of Mr. Alcott’s School, 1874

56.   Detail from Broadside, Excursion! To Leominster, Wednesday, April 28, ’52, 1852

57.   An Extraordinary Gazette; or, The Disapointed Politicians, 1778

58.   The Council of the Rulers, and the Elders against the Tribe of the Americanites, 1775

59.   John Lewis Krimmel, Village Tavern, 1813–1814

60.   Theater stage with wall map, ca. 1790

61.   Trade card, Angier March 13 Market Square, Newburyport, ca. 1794–1812

62.   Edward Hazen, The Panorama of Professions and Trades, 1836

63.   Broadside, Wagner & M’Guigan 116 Chestnut, 1846

64.   Title page, J. A. Bancroft & Co., Illustrated Catalogue of School Merchandise, Furniture, Apparatus, Charts, Etc., 1867–1875?

65.   Detail of foldout from Jan Van der Heiden, Beschryving der nieuwlijks uitgevonden en geoctrojeerde slang-brand-spuiten, 1690

66.   John Henry, A New and Accurate Map of Virginia, 1770

67.   John Bowles, A Catalogue of Maps, Prints, Copy Books, 1753

68.   Albert Newsam, P. S. Duval 7 Bank Alley, Philadelphia, ca. 1840

69.   Dining Room, Governor’s Palace, Williamsburg, Virginia

70.   Isaac Ware, A Complete Body of Architecture: Adorned with Plans and Elevations, from Original Designs, 1756

71.   Ackerman’s Repository of Arts, 1811

72.   Cartouche in Robert de Vaugondy, Partie de l’Amérique septentrionale, 1755

73.   Thomas Chippendale, Pier Glass Frames, in The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director, 1755

74.   Ralph Earl, Ann Whiteside Earl, 1784

75.   Francis William Edmonds, The New Bonnet, 1858

76.   Ralph Earl, Noah Smith, 1798

77.   Francis William Edmonds, The Image Pedlar, 1844

78.   John Reed and James Smithers, Map of the City and Liberties of Philadelphia, 1774–1786

79.   Handkerchief, A Map of the Present Seat of War in North America, 1776–1789

80.   John Walker, Walker’s Geographical Pastime, 1834

81.   Plate, punch bowl, and jug, 1790–1810

82.   Mother Holding Thomas Carew Hunt Martin as Infant, June 22, 1857

83.   Robert P. Smith, The Washington Map of the United States, 1861

84.   Detail from The Washington Map of the United States, 1861

85.   Thomas Jefferys, Map of the Most Inhabited Part of New England, 1755

86.   Habits of a Flemish Gentleman in 1620, from Thomas Jefferys, A Collection of Dresses, 1757–1772

87.   Habit of an Ottawa, an Indian Nation of North America, from Thomas Jefferys, A Collection of Dresses, 1757–1772

88.   Liberty from Thomas Jefferys, A Collection of Dresses, 1757–1772

89.   Cartouche in Henry S. Tanner [and W. Humphrys], Map of North America, 1823

90.   Cartouche in Henry S. Tanner, United States of America, 1829

91.   Cartouche in Philip Carrigain, New Hampshire, 1816

92.   Cartouche in J. H. Young [and S. Augustus Mitchell], Map of the United States, 1831

93.   Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament, 1856

94.   Detail in S. Augustus Mitchell, Mitchell’s Reference and Distance Map of the United States, 1835

95.   Detail in J. Calvin Smith, Map of the United States of America Including Canada and a Large Portion of Texas, 1850

96.   Albert Alden, Alden’s Pictorial Map of the United States of North America, 1845

97.   Detail in Alden’s Pictorial Map of the United States, 1845

98.   View from the Mountain House, Catskills, in N. P. Willis, American Scenery, 1840

99.   J. M. Atwood, Pictorial Map of the United States, 1849

100. Ensign, Bridgman & Fanning, The Cottage Ornament, 1856

101. Bernard Ratzer, Plan of the City of New York in North America, 1776

102. Elevated View, in S[eth] Eastman, Treatise on Topographical Drawing, 1837

103. Map View, in S[eth] Eastman, Treatise on Topographical Drawing, 1837

104. Gaylord Watson, The American Republic and Rail-Road Map of the United States, 1867

105. Griffith Morgan Hopkins, Jr., Map of Adams Co., Pennsylvania, 1858

106. John Sartain, Abraham Lincoln: President of the United States, 1864

107. Henry S. Tanner, The Traveller’s Guide, 1825

108. Thomas Jefferys, The American Atlas, 1776

109. [E. Bowen and R. Gibson] An Accurate Map of North America, in Jefferys, The American Atlas, 1776

110. Henry S. Tanner, A New American Atlas, 1823

111. Henry S. Tanner, Map of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, in A New American Atlas, 1823

112. George W. Colton, Colton’s Atlas of the World, 1855

113. George W. Colton, Pennsylvania, in Colton’s Atlas of the World, 1855

114. George W. Colton, Colton’s Illustrated Cabinet Atlas, 1859

115. Map case for William Scull, A Map of Pennsylvania, 1775

116. William Scull, A Map of Pennsylvania, 1775

117. Map case for Henry S. Tanner, United States of America, 1829

118. Detail from François A. de Garsault, Art du tailleur, contenant le tailleur d’habits d’hommes, 1769

119. Joseph Couts, A Practical Guide for the Tailor’s Cutting Room, [1848]

120. John Ogilby, The Roads through England; or, Ogilby’s Survey, 1759

121. Joseph Wright of Derby, Sir Brooke Boothby, 1781

122. J[ohn] Gibson, New York and Pensilvania, in Atlas Minimus, 1758

123. H. D. Pursell, A Map of the United States of N. America, in Bailey’s Pocket Almanac, 1786

124. S. Augustus Mitchell, Mitchell’s National Map of the American Republic, 1843

125. Map case for S. Augustus Mitchell, Mitchell’s National Map of the American Republic, 1843

126. Handkerchief, J. C. Sidney, Map of the Circuit of Ten Miles around the City of Philadelphia, 1847

127. [Amos Doolittle], A Map of the Northern and Middle States, in Jedidiah Morse, The American Geography, 1789

128. The Miscellaneous Works of Charles Barrell, 1797

129. John Melish, United States, in A New Juvenile Atlas, 1814

130. Cover of S. Augustus Mitchell, Mitchell’s School Atlas, 1839

131. S. Augustus Mitchell, Map of the United States and Texas, in Mitchell’s School Atlas, 1839

132. Jacob A. Cummings, First Lessons in Geography and Astronomy, 1818

133. Detail, Mitchell’s Outline Maps, in Henry Barnard, School Architecture, 1850

134. George W. Fitch and G. Woolworth Colton, Colton and Fitch’s Introductory School Geography, 1856

135. Alexander Robb, Specimen of Printing Types and Ornaments, 1846

136. Frances A. Henshaw, Book of Penmanship, Apr. 29, 1823, p. 45

137. Joseph Worcester, Construction of Maps, in Elements of Geography, 1819

138. Jane Naomi Strong, United States, 1827

139. Samuel Gridley Howe, Atlas of the United States, Printed for the Use of the Blind, 1837

140. John Wallis, A New Map of Europe, ca. 1800

141. John Graeme Melish, Geographical Conversation Cards, 1824

142. Needlework map by Mary Franklin, 1808

143. Elizabeth Graham, Plan of the City of Washington, 1800–1803

144. Map sampler by Elizabeth Leoser, 1831

145. Frances A. Henshaw, Book of Penmanship, Apr. 29, 1823, p. 55

146. The Dis-United States—A Black Business, Punch, 1856

147. Broadside, National, 1860

GRAPHS.

1. One-Sheet Maps, 1750–1860: List Price and 2010 Relative Value

2. Two-Sheet Maps, 1750–1860: List Price and 2010 Relative Value

3. Four-Sheet Maps, 1750–1860: List Price and 2010 Relative Value

4. Six-Sheet Maps, 1750–1860: List Price and 2010 Relative Value

THE SOCIAL LIFE OF MAPS IN AMERICA, 1750–1860

A map was not always a map. Often it was the vehicle for elaborate nongeographical ideas. In some branches of cartography curiosity did overcome metaphysics . . . in others, . . . the contest between a rational and a mystical view of the world that dominated [a] period’s intellectual life was never resolved.

— Juergen Schulz (1987)

As a mediation, an interface, [the map] remains hidden. Among numerous literary accounts, in the most varied cultural contexts that call attention to the ways maps are used, few mention the materiality of the map and the graphic characteristics of what is concretely put in view.

— Christian Jacob (1992; 2006)

We organize information on maps in order to see our knowledge in a new way. As a result, maps suggest explanations; and while explanations reassure us, they also inspire us to ask more questions, consider other possibilities. To ask for a map is to say, Tell me a story.

— Peter Turchi (2004)

PREFACE

Introducing the Social Life of American Maps

When taking measure of the Benefits of the Civil War in 1865, the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson introduced an unusual meter. Upon reflecting that the present war, on a prodigiously large scale, has cost us how many valuable lives, Emerson launched into a cost-benefit analysis, according to which the war has made many lives valuable that were not so before, through the start and expansion it has given. The journals say, he continued, "[the war] has demoralized many rebel regiments, but also it has moralized many of our regiments, and not only so, but moralized cities and states. It added to every house and heart a vast enlargement. In every house and shop, an American map has been unrolled, and daily studied,—and now that peace has come, every citizen finds himself a skilled student of the condition, means, and future, of this continent. Unlike newspapers, which were using names and numbers to provide an empirical reckoning of the war’s momentous losses, Emerson called upon maps and the broader discourse surrounding them as the means for recalculating the balance of human suffering. Subject to daily study, maps were giving citizens a renewed sense of moral fiber (heart), domestic purpose (house), and national belonging (continent). According to Emerson, the American map" was thus the nation’s moral compass, directing the lives of its citizens, realigning their social orientation to each other, and giving new definition to a postwar union.¹

The 1866 lithographic print of the painting Home Again by Trevor McClurg at once illustrated and elaborated Emerson’s cartographic turn (Figure 1). In the picture, the arrival of a wounded Union officer interrupts a domestic scene of muted comfort. As his figure draws the eyes of the members of the household, this detailed portrayal of the soldier recalls the poignant stories of family reunions taking place nationwide. But by framing the soldier’s profile against the backdrop of a large wall map showing the nation’s outline, the picture grounds the reunion inside a deeply layered narrative about American map culture. The map’s prominent placement on the wall near the door references its compounded usefulness. As a tool of wayfinding, it shows distant places; as a domestic display object, it implies its daily study by searching eyes and pointed fingers intent on tracing the locations of battlegrounds, troop movements, and the latest whereabouts of the absent son, husband, and father. Staged upright and unfurled, the map’s format further acknowledges a profoundly symbolic function. Occupying the middle ground between bookshelf, parlor table, and the outside world, McClurg’s map acts as the material, visual, and emotive horizon binding multiple means of mass communication, structures of feeling, and everyday social habits that were familiar to nineteenth-century audiences but have become unfamiliar to us today.

That the philosopher Emerson and the painter McClurg selected the idea and image of the American map points to a deep-rooted faith in making maps the material base and symbol system for restoring America to Americans after the Civil War. For readers today, choosing an American map—indeed, any American map—appears to be counterintuitive; after all, the nation had just used maps for five years to differentiate North from South, friendly from enemy territory, neighbors from combatants. To Emerson and McClurg, however, American maps were greater than the sum of recent events; they stood for a preexisting matrix of cultural experiences and beliefs that considered maps to have restorative qualities. As far as postwar meditations go, then, Emerson’s call on the American map as a cultural agent raises fundamental questions about maps and their uses: when and how did maps like the one shown in McClurg’s painting enter every house and shop and become part of the American everyday experience? How were large or small maps embedded—literally and symbolically—in American public and private life? Ultimately, what kind of cultural work did maps, in particular mass-produced commercial maps, perform in the nation during the decades leading up to the Civil War and even earlier, during the decades before and after the founding of the United States?²

FIGURE 1. Trevor McClurg, Home Again. Lithographed by Dominique Fabronius, printed by W. Endicott & Co. (New York, ca. 1866). Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

Examining the social life of American maps allows us to comprehend more fully the expressed faith in the usability of maps as a prominent and pervasive medium that had shaped the lives of the American people to its core. This study’s argument, broadly speaking, is that American-made maps emerged as a meaningful media platform and popular print genre during the mid-eighteenth century precisely because the map as artifact and the concept of mapping had become involved in social relationships in a way that went well beyond our current understanding of the history of American cartography, in general, and the influence of maps on American culture, in particular. On the one hand, the study emphasizes that, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, cartographic literacy was anything but a common competence; reading the squiggly lines of topographical maps, following map coordinates, and thinking cartographically was a skill and habit that not only had to be learned and practiced but that generated many applications and odd uses as American citizens took to maps as a major mode of social communication. On the other hand, because most maps were commercial and were thus considered by their makers and users as salable goods or commodities, much of their value—be it informational, symbolic, or restorative—developed during the social process of exchange. Focusing on the things that are exchanged, rather than simply on the forms or functions of exchange, as Arjun Appadurai has observed, makes it possible to argue . . . that commodities, like persons, have social lives. To better understand the influence of maps in early America, this study focuses on maps as things whose social lives reveal in full their material and cultural utility and value.³

In contemporary intellectual history, the value most commonly attributed to maps, and most familiar to readers today, is twofold: the geometric rationalization of space in conjunction with the spatial organization of society. According to scholarship across the disciplinary spectrum—and this includes works by Henri Lefebvre (philosophy), Bruno Latour (sociology), Immanuel Wallerstein (history), Benedict Anderson (political science), David Harvey (geography), and John Brian Harley (cartography), among others—geometrically configured maps emerged in sixteenth-century Europe in correlation with the age of reconnaissance and the formation of the modern nation-state. At the same time as colonization projects turned European mapping practices into a global phenomenon for imagining geographical and cultural spaces, to follow Lefebvre’s influential work The Production of Space (1991), maps emerged in European countries as a language common to country people and townspeople, to the authorities and to artists—a code which allowed space not only to be ‘read’ but also to be constructed.⁴

The producers of this code were itinerant land surveyors, sedentary map-engravers, and a host of spatial architects ranging from imperial politicians and merchants to landscape designers and urban planners. Their products were easy to recognize both locally and globally because, as a mode of representation, maps created a fundamentally isotropic model, bringing into alignment multiple and often counterintuitive conceptions of space, such as continents, islands, nations, mountains, roadways, and human bodies. Correspondingly, while learning to use maps, map consumers found early maps to be right or wrong, good or bad, beautiful or ugly. As a result, the application of critical modalities such as accuracy, technology, and even aesthetics transformed maps into more than a valuable tool determining human interactions with space. Between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, the map’s unique graphic organization—involving coordinates, grid lines, and a global calculus for reckoning locations and finding places—emerged as an evaluative representation for gauging social relationships in both high culture and everyday life.⁵

When we examine the history of cartography in British North America and the United States, we see that Americans—from indigenous peoples to European colonists to first-generation citizens—experienced the cartographic turn firsthand. Charting coastal waters and rivers, plotting towns and land grants, erasing as well as inscribing ethnic communities, drawing borders between nations and townships, American-made maps answered state and local demands for measuring the physical and social world, establishing order for some while disenfranchising many others. Landmark studies in cartobibliography have recovered a yet-to-be–fully explored archive of maps consisting of numerous great maps, that is, maps of high political or scientific importance, and an even larger number of anonymous, nondescript little maps that have been of small historical consequence but were best sellers, ranging from atlas foldouts and book maps to school maps and magazine inserts. Coinciding with the cartobibliographic recovery, descriptive and analytical surveys have begun to document a highly differentiated canon of American maps. Showing parts or the totality of what is now the United States, this canon consists of crudely hand-drawn property plats and surveyors’ maps; elaborately printed topographical maps screening regions and continents; colorful political maps dividing the nation and states into administrative units; special-interest maps advertising transportation networks and counties; and thematic maps tracing diseases, coal deposits, or slave populations.⁶

Cultural histories addressing American maps, especially studies that are building on the New History of cartography inspired by the work of J. B. Harley and David Woodward, have located the value of maps at the intersection of empirical representation and symbolic text. Parsing the semiotic complexity of historical maps, these studies have demonstrated that in America (as in Europe), cartographic representations were deeply attuned to political interests and individual passions. Take, for example, the 1819 assessment of maps by the commissioner of the United States General Land Office, Josiah Meigs: "[With] a few geographical positions on the map of the public surveys, being accurately determined by astronomical observations, it is obvious that, with very little difficulty, the longitude and latitude of every farm, and every log-hut and court house, may be ascertained. . . . So wise, beautiful and perfect a system was never before adopted by any government or nation on earth. Although the commissioner was discussing Public Lands" in the United States, in his evaluation, maps served multiple discursive functions, from propaganda tool to social blueprint to source of aesthetic pleasure.⁷

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this book contends, American maps injected a map-oriented ontology into a broad range of cultural compositions, with the noticeable result that, between the decades leading up to the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, words and images would project map-inspired visions of peace and prosperity, order and unity. More important, as indicated by the commissioner’s explanation of cartography’s capacity to make transparent the depiction of both land and people, maps emerged as a figure for what we would call ideology—a historical, cultural formation that masquerades as a universal, natural code. On the whole, recent histories engaging with American cartography—be they inspired by empirical methods or semiotic theories—agree that the value of early historical maps emerged from a mutually constitutive process in the course of which concrete mapping practices became tangled with ideological visions. American maps—be they of a European or of an Anglo-, Ibero-, Franco-, or Dutch-American make—were a highly effective accomplice in the creation of empires and nation-states: they were the aide of choice for maintaining power and social control; they were responsible for parceling out large chunks of America among invading colonists living along the Atlantic coast or, later, in the western half of the continent; they facilitated the removal of indigenous peoples and the surveillance of local cultures.⁸

Yet, by and large, these studies disagree over how this process of entanglement worked. How did maps, especially commercial maps, manage to transpose the practical-use function of representing geographic places into navigating or even constructing more elusive social relationships? How did people make the leap of faith that would entrust maps and their mode of signification with the responsibility of defining political discourse as well as plumbing the American psyche? Despite the efforts devoted to recovering original maps and their meaning, the interpretation of historical maps has been hampered by what Lefebvre has provocatively called the yawning gap that separates a map’s linguistic and imaginative space from its material base and the social spaces in which its language becomes practice. Or, to put this differently, because maps are mostly treated as unique, discursive spaces rather than as ordinary physical artifacts, as Christian Jacob has suggested, our critical assessment of maps often tends to pass without any gap from the space on the map to the real space outside the map, eclipsing all knowledge of social, economic, and cultural factors that were inflecting both the map’s spatial representation and the external realities of space.⁹

Two paintings, a portrait and a panorama, offer previews of what happened inside this gap—that is, inside the conceptual and physical spaces in which people encountered maps before the Civil War. In the first example, the image of a map is the centerpiece of a family portrait, here Edward Savage’s Washington Family (1798–1805; Figure 2 [Plate 1]). Originally painted on a nine-foot-wide canvas to show The President and Family, the full size of life, the painted copy of the map entitled The Plan of the City of Washington—drawn by Pierre L’Enfant in 1791 and published by John Reid in large sheets in 1795—underscores the president’s symbolic status in the new nation and his vision of a new capital that has yet to be built. At the same time, spread out like a tablecloth in a stylized setting that imitates social traffic areas such as the study, the parlor, or the hallway, the map occupies a social space reserved for conducting business and rituals of conviviality. In this sociable setting, the map’s unique content becomes a conversation piece fostering dialogue among the nation’s first family. Its stiff paper format—visibly straining against the sitters’ touch—further identifies the map as a sensory object and material conduit connecting not only the president to the national audience but the husband to his wife, Martha Custis, to his step-grandchildren, Eleanor and George, and to one of the family’s enslaved servants, who is eyeing the map from the margins.¹⁰

Forty years later, the second painting—a panoramic sketch of the Annual Fair of the American Institute at Niblo’s Garden by Benjamin Johns Harrison (ca. 1845; Figure 3)—underscores how maps not only provided a gateway for social intimacy but fostered public engagement on a much grander scale. Rendered invisible by the painting’s overwhelming display of large textiles and framed pictures, not to mention the array of clothing and domestic furnishings, the maps emerge only after one consults the fair catalogs. These tell us that official-looking wall maps were shown next to smaller maps ranging from school drawings and embroidery work to novelty prints and commercial best sellers (the painting hints at wall maps at the center right and back). Running the gamut from being singular efforts of manual labor performed at home to being mass-produced prints assembled in steam-powered factories, these maps were submitted by men and women, students and city workers, country clergy and statesmen. Staged throughout the fair’s exhibition spaces, the maps were model displays serving as the perfect answer to the fair sponsors’ stated mission. Seeking to promote domestic industry by exhibiting new ideas and inventions, they hoped that by bringing together men of all conditions in society, and all vocations, articles, like the maps on display, would wield social influence.¹¹

FIGURE 2. Edward Savage, The Washington Family. Oil on panel, ca. 1798–1805. 1961.708. Bequest of Henry Francis du Pont. Winterthur Museum

Representing two very different social spaces, both paintings illustrate, in their own style, what could happen when the gap separating maps and people is filled with accounts of map experiences, situational behaviors, and cultural expectations. However, if we only study the publishing history and semiotics of highly visible maps like The Plan of Washington, our critical language is ill-equipped to recognize that the map signified more than an imagined city space and a presidential vision. What we miss is that its meaning was also predicated on a variety of personal interactions—beginning with the First Family’s sitting for the painter and ending with the innumerable viewers that have since then examined the map and Savage’s painted copy. We miss that the map’s value is thus inflected by the viewer’s class, gender, age, education, economic power, and ethnic origin—in a word, by the social and performative factors that surrounded maps during the process of exchange and circulation. Similarly, neither do bibliographic histories or the literary study of the map’s visual rhetoric give a full account of the integration of less-visible maps into a wide range of cultural institutions where they informed government agencies, businesses, schools, and family homes. Nor can the textual turn and its close reading of map symbols discern that maps were woven into the broader social fabric of economic life to the point where, as a ubiquitous commodity, they were as plentiful and diverse as the people who made and entertained them. Indeed, none of our current analytical tools is equipped to explain the process by which the exchange of maps among a socially diverse citizenry naturalized maps inside and outside the American marketplace; or that, as much as the economic value of a map depended on its received utilitarian status of showing us how to find places, its cultural value was contingent on the maps’ perceived status of serving a common social or political good.

FIGURE 3. Benjamin Johns Harrison, Annual Fair of the American Institute at Niblo’s Garden. Watercolor on paper, ca. 1845. 20 1/4 × 27 1/4 in. 51.119. Bequest of Mrs. J. Insley Blair in memory of Mr. and Mrs. J. Insley Blair. Museum of the City of New York

Yet what bridges the gap between map and people—and, at the same time, links the visible famous map to the mass of invisible anonymous maps—is precisely the maps’ mostly underreported materiality and status as commodity. As salable objects, maps led a double life. On the one hand, they existed outside or next to us and were usually considered useful things as long as their basic properties satisfied the human need for spatial orientation. On the other hand, the people’s daily proximity to maps changed the maps’ social character, and a different set of values arose during the process of exchange—namely, during the moment when they were used and their meaning as usable things became contingent on the rituals of representation, patterns of transaction, and sources of motivation. In the process of exchange, as suggested by Emerson’s words and McClurg’s image, the social life of American maps exceeded their use value both as tools of wayfinding and as salable goods. Indeed, considering the implied faith that maps could provide the basis of a national belief system, Emerson and McClurg invested maps with the kind of mystical character that Karl Marx would argue in 1867 was evident in western commodity culture, where even the seemingly trivial thing was abounding in metaphysical subtleties. For Marx, it was the task of material history to demystify the use of things by examining the social relationship between commodities. Historicizing the relationship between maps as commercial goods and social medium is the task of The Social Life of Maps in America so as to better understand the character of maps, even the most trivial ones, in American culture.¹²

Four methodologies inform the recovery of the social life of maps and, in doing so, explore their transformation from rare to popular artifacts, from being mundane tools to becoming articles of faith. First, for maps to come alive and for their social life to become recognizable as a source of their meaning, this study considers maps, not as rationalized systems, but as if they were environments where images live, or personas and avatars that address us and can be addressed in turn. Whereas current map histories explore the meaning of maps mostly from within the content of the map, the following chapters also approach maps from the outside. A map’s meaning is contingent on its broader surroundings and the environmental factors that shape the circulation of maps in specific historical and cultural milieus. By exploring the contextual as well as situational influences on both the physical map and its implied meaning, this approach casts its net wide, seeking to locate maps inside larger social and economic networks—as depicted by the domestic space staging the Washington family or the public fairgrounds of the American Institute—involving an ever-changing array of actors and settings.¹³

Complementing the environmental methodology, and second, is a material one. By the same token that the meaning of American maps was entangled with the social world beyond their edges, their social life was bound up with the materiality of maps and the material culture that surrounded them. As varied as map contents were, their messages were interwoven with the physical formats that supported them. Commercial maps were made of paper, cotton, and silk; they were canvas-backed giants and ephemeral paper miniatures; they were stored in boxes, bound in weighty folios, and folded for pockets; there were needlework and puzzle maps, map handkerchiefs and map powder horns; and last but not least, there were transfer maps etched into copper, wood, and stone or copied onto textiles and ceramics. All maps were thus substantial matter; they were weighed, gauged, and always manipulated, be it for commercial shipment and personal travel or for mandatory school lessons and theatrical displays. As material maps, they not only left their own set of marks in shipping and probate records, but they left their material traces in the larger world of goods, asserting themselves as things in a material culture driven by the objectification of nature and people, customs and emotions.¹⁴

In a third approach, this study turns to the records of personal experience in order to reveal some of the less tangible ways in which maps came alive for American citizens. To acknowledge that maps were matter is to say that the meaning and significance of maps hinges on more than the eye can see. Mapmakers and map users took great pains to educate each other about map content, how to interact with them, and how to store them along with durable devices and passing memories. Thus, close examination of documented map interactions by people of various social backgrounds explores specific maps’ or map genres’ effects on reader responses and habits of cognition. Doing so locates maps in the world of early American phenomenology, in particular, sensory history, where the acts of both mapmaking and -reading involved sight and touch, calling upon the so-called higher and lower senses. The visuality of bright colors and intricate, inky designs, the tactile quality of spongy wove paper, needlework samplers, and early braille-like prints for the blind, the olfactory experience of paints and varnishes, and possibly even the taste of foodstuff, like sugar or tobacco, bearing the imprimatur of