How Did Old Maps Become Valuable? On Map Collecting and the History of Cartography in the United States

Abstract

An appreciation for old maps as culturally important documents came slowly in the United States. The first precondition for this shift was the reframing of history brought by political independence. The second was the growth of facsimile maps, which made these sources available to a wider audience. The third was a loose network of scholars, archivists, collectors, and federal actors—including Johann Georg Kohl—who gradually began to advocate for the cultural and political significance of old maps. Yet ongoing advocacy for a federal map collection did not produce results until the end of the Civil War, just as the trade in old maps coincided with the emergence of university-based historical and geographical research. The rapid growth of institutional map collections—including the Library of Congress Division of Maps—by the turn of the twentieth century bears out this shift. The idea that outdated maps might be valuable evidence of history and culture could only develop once maps were understood not simply as instruments of accuracy, but meaningful artifacts of history. Here we trace this complex story across multiple areas of American life from the early nineteenth century to the interwar period.

Keywords:

• Maps
• map collecting
• libraries
• history of cartography
• history of libraries
• American history
• history of discovery

Notes

Notes

1 https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu

2 On the evolution of historical thinking in the early nation, see Nina Baym, Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790-1860 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995); Susan Schulten, Mapping the Nation: History and Cartography in Nineteenth-Century America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), chapter 1; and Ellen Ka-May Cheng, The Plain and Noble Garb of Truth: Nationalism and Impartiality in American Historical Writing, 1784-1860, (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008).

3 This was followed by the founding of the New-York Historical Society (1804), the American Antiquarian Society (1812), and the State Library of Virginia (1823).

4 See “Terra Firma: the beginnings of the MHS Map Collection,” exhibit at Massachusetts Historical Society (2015). I thank Mary Yacovone and Ron Grim for their insights into the early years of the Society.

5 In 1884, the Coast Survey published Kohl’s extensive histories of coastal discovery from the 1850s, which included lists of the most historical relevant maps that became essential to later bibliographic efforts.

6 For reviews of Winsor’s Narrative see The Independent (April 7, 1887), p. 10; W.F. Poole, in The Dial (April 1886) VI, 72, p. 2; and (February 1888), VIII, 9, p. 2.

7 Wright and Paullin acknowledged these collections in the preface to the Atlas. On the innovative maps of the atlas, see the Charles Oscar Paullin Collection, Geography and Map Division, LC (G3701.S1 var.P3 Paullin Vault), especially letters in Box 56, such as Edward D. Jones to Jameson, December 11, 1912.