References
- This paper stems from research into the development of American landownership mapping which forms the basis of a book‐length study in preparation. An abbreviated version of this paper was presented to the Tenth International Conference on the History of Cartography, Dublin, 1983. Fellowship support from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities and the Newberry Library, Chicago, is gratefully acknowledged.
- Stephenson , Richard W. 1967 . “ ‘Introduction’ ” . In Land ownership maps: a checklist of nineteenth century United States county maps in the Library of Congress , Washington, D.C. : Library of Congress Geography and Map Division . Comparatively little research has been devoted to American county landownership mapping. The most useful general introduction to the subject is obtained from the
- Thrower , Norman J. W. 1961 . ‘The county atlas of the United States’ . Surveying and Mapping , 21 : 365 – 73 .
- Ristow , Walter W. 1977 . Maps for an emerging nation: commercial cartography in nineteenth century America , Washington, D.C. : Library of Congress .
- Friis , Herman R. 1958 . ‘Highlights in the first hundred years of surveying and mapping and geographical exploration of the United States by the federal government’ . Surveying and Mapping , 18 : 186 – 206 .
- Ehrenberg , Ralph E. 1977 . ‘Taking the measure of the land’ . Prologue , 9 : 129 – 50 .
- Texas represents the only exception, where the state's General Land Office, following a law of 1879, produced about 250 county cadastral maps. Stephenson, R. W., op.cit. xxii. This notable exception has yet to be explained in the larger context considered here.
- There were non‐American county map men in Canada, to be sure, besides American operators, but the precedents were all American. The Canadian context requires more discussion than can be offered here. So far, scholars writing on Canadian county maps and atlases have not directly confronted the issue of American versus non‐American early influences on county mapping there. For an overview of Canadian activity
- Layng , Theodore . 1970 . “ ‘Introduction’ ” . In County atlases of Canada: a descriptive catalog , Edited by: May , Betty . i – iv . Ottawa : National Map Collection, Public Archives of Canada .
- Winearls , Joan . 1976 . “ ‘Nineteenth century county land ownership maps of Canada: an introductory essay’ ” . In County maps: land ownership maps of Canada in the 19th century , Edited by: Maddick , Heather . 1 – 8 . Ottawa : National Map Collection, Public Archives of Canada .
- This distinction has not been made in previous discussions of the topic, e.g. Stephenson, R. W., op.cit. and hence the chronology and typology offerered here differs from prior practice.
- Conzen , Michael P. 1984 . ‘Landownership maps and county atlases,’ . Agricultural History , 58 : 118 – 22 . Some statistical details regarding the new comprehensive checklist are reported in
- Skelton , R. A. 1978 . County atlases of the British Isles, 1579–1850: a bibliography , Folkstone : Dawson .
- Laxton , P. 1976 . ‘The geodetic and topographical evaluation of English county maps, 1740–1840’ . Cartographic Journal , 13 : 37 – 54 .
- Candee , Richard M. 1982 . “ ‘Land surveys of William and John Godsoe of Kittery, Maine: 1689–1796’ ” . In New England prospect: maps, place names, and the historical landscape , Edited by: Benes , Peter . 9 – 46 . Boston : Boston University for the Dublin Seminar on New England Folklife . See, for example
- Stephenson , Richard W. 1972 . ‘Charles Varié: nineteenth century cartographer’ . Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping . 1972 , Washington, D.C.. pp. 189 – 98 . ACSM .
- Stephenson , R. Land ownership maps ix – xiii .
- Whittlesey , Charles . 1888 . ‘Ohio Surveys’ . Western Reserve Historical Society Tracts , 59 : 187 – 90 .
- Thrower , Norman J. W. 1966 . Original survey and land subdivision: a comparative study of the form and effect of contrasting cadastral surveys , Chicago : Rand McNally .
- Ristow , Walter W. 1969 . ‘The map publishing career of Robert Pearsall Smith’ . Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress , 26 : 170 – 96 .
- 1972 . ‘The anastatic process in map reproduction’ . Cartographic Journal , 9 : 37 – 42 .
- Ashmead , Henry G. 1884 . History of Delaware County, Pennsylvania , 260 674 Philadelphia : L. H. Everts and Co. . Information regarding Joshua W. Ash is drawn from
- Ristow , Walter W. 1979 . ‘The French‐Smith map and gazetteer of New York State’ . Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress , 36 : 68 – 90 .
- Smith , Robert Pearsall . 1864 . ‘Communication’ . Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society , 9 : 350 – 53 .
- Several early New York county maps did not meet planimetric standards of accuracy, so Smith instigated re‐surveys with greater precision, so that the mosaic of county maps could lead to an acceptable composite state map.
- Walling , Henry F. 1886 . ‘Topographic surveys of states’ . Van Nostrand's Engineering Magazine , 34 : 334 – 43 .
- Ristow , Walter W. 1965 . ‘Nineteenth‐century cadastral maps in Ohio’ . Papers of the Bibliographic Society of America , 59 : 306 – 15 .
- Le Gear , Clara E. 1950 and 1953 . United States Atlases , vols. 1 and 2 , Washington, D.C. : Library of Congress . Factual information presented in this section is based primarily upon collation of bibliographical material in Stephenson, R., Land ownership maps
- Karrow , Robert W. , ed. 1981 . Checklist of Printed Maps of the Middle West to 1900 , 13 vols , Boston : G. K. Hall and Co. . and further bibliographical and biographical research by the author, to be reported in full in a subsequent publication
- Conzen , Michael P. 1984 . “ ‘Evolution of the Chicago map trade,’ ” . In Chicago mapmakers: essays on the rise of the city's map trade , Edited by: Conzen , Michael P. 4 – 11 . Chicago : Chicago Map Society . Shober's importance to Midwestern mapmaking is discussed briefly in
- Copies of the map version are held by the British Library and the US National Archives, while atlas copies are held by the Library of Congress and the Minnesota State Historical Society.
- Conzen , Michael P. “ ‘Maps for the masses: Alfred T. Andreas and the Midwestern county atlas trade’ ” . In Chicago mapmakers Edited by: Conzen , M. 46 – 63 . For a detailed study of Andreas’ extraordinary career and accomplishments, see
- Ristow , Walter W. 1966 . ‘Alfred T. Andreas and his Minnesota atlas’ . Minnesota History , 40 : 120 – 129 .
- Spahn , Raymond and Betty . 1965 . ‘Wesley R. Brink: history huckster,’ . Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society , 48 : 117 – 38 .
- Danzer , Gerald A. and Conzen , M. “ ‘George F. Cram and the American perception of space,’ ” . In Chicago mapmakers 32 – 45 . For a study of George Cram's atlas career, see
- This file is in the form of a single‐volume ledger, now known as the Ogle Register, and is held by the Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, Michigan. The writer thanks William Miles, Map Curator there, for his assistance in studying this manuscript source.
- Peterson combined cadastral and ownership data with a rather intricate mapping of geomorphological and vegetation features. The maps are lithographed from a hand‐draughted original that looks little more refined than a typical workmap or compilation map. But the lack of elegance is balanced by the wealth of information carried on the maps, which produced a rare combination for the price. Peterson's case represents an idiosyncratic development rather than a norm for its period and place, but deserves closer attention.
- Treude , Mai , ed. 1980 . “ ‘Introduction’ ” . In Windows to the past: a bibliography of Minnesota county atlases , Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Center for Urban and Regional Affairs . It has been difficult for historians of American cartography to view twentieth‐century maps as historical enough to warrant attention. Hence, most major regional and thematic cartobibliographies of American maps, if they reach beyond the colonial period into the nineteenth century, extend no further than 1900: see for example, Stephenson, R., op.cit. reference 2, and Karrow, R., op.cit. reference 19. Consequently, research on developments in twentieth century cartography has been hampered. For a fleeting discussion of twentieth century county landownership mapping firms covering Minnesota, see the
- Abstracting companies were, and are, as much a fixture of American county towns as the local newspaper company. They provide title searches and other services for property transactions, and are directly interested in any technical aid related to the transfer of land, such as landownership maps.
- It is sometimes lacking altogether, adding to the confusion bibliographers often face in correctly attributing authorship to county maps and atlases.
- Hixson's early maps are usually dated, some prominently. But in later years his maps and, especially, his plat books were undated, perhaps to conserve their saleability as the information they portrayed sunk into obsolescence with the passage of time. Consequently, bibliographers, including those at the Library of Congress, have been reduced to attributing dates to most of Hixson's atlases on the basis of circumstantial evidence, resulting in often quite erroneous guesses. Precise dating could be achieved from analysis of landownership data on the maps in relation to local land records, but would be immensely costly and time consuming. For the Hixson undated collection as a whole, this would be quite beyond the scope of an individual researcher.
- It is uncertain just how Minnesota (c. 1916) or Wisconsin (c. 1917) were covered so thoroughly in a preparatory period so brief for Hixson's statewide coverage to be synchronic for a given year, as the small evidence bearing on this aspect, drawn from the Ogle Register, suggests. The Minnesota material consists of a batch of large folio sheets upon which is printed on a loose matrix of township diagrams arranged in rough geographical sequence. One copy is held by the Map Library of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
- Printing by cerography, or wax‐engraving, was never a significant technique in publishing county maps because the print runs were usually small, around 1,000 copies. Also, landownership maps contained so many names to be fitted into small spaces that there was no advantage to the joint use of letterpress typography with that method.
- It is hoped that this overview of American landownership mapping has demonstrated, inter alia, the necessity of considering county maps and county atlases within a unified historical framework if their development and character are to be seen in a fuller cultural context. The predilections of collectors, and the storage and bibliographical access preferences of libraries may favour the separate consideration of maps and atlases of this genre, but in genetic substance and meaning their common traits and intertwined development are far more important to appreciate than their superficial differences in format.
- This paper stems from research into the development of American landownership mapping which forms the basis of a book‐length study in preparation. An abbreviated version of this paper was presented to the Tenth International Conference on the History of Cartography, Dublin, 1983. Fellowship support from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities and the Newberry Library, Chicago, is gratefully acknowledged.