From left: UTA President Robert E. Witt, U. T. System Chancellor William Cunningham, Virginia Garrett, and Jenkins Garrett.

On October 1, 1997, the President’s Office and the University Libraries sponsored an appreciation ceremony thanking Virginia Garrett for the gift of her map collection to the Special Collections Division. The gift included more than 900 historic maps focusing on the Gulf of Mexico and Texas. President Robert E. Witt presided at the October 1 dinner and program. Also speaking that evening were William Cunningham, chancellor of the UT System; Mrs. Garrett; Louis De Vorsey, professor emeritus of geography at the University of Georgia; and Tom Wilding, director of libraries.

In addition, the Libraries opened a special exhibition that evening entitled "The Cartographic Collections of Virginia Garrett." The exhibit, located on the sixth floor of UTA’s Central Library in the Special Collections Division, will run through March 15, 1998. A special gallery guide was printed highlighting the details of the exhibition. Assisting in the curating of the exhibition and the preparation of the gallery guide were David Buisseret, holder of the Jenkins and Virginia Garrett Endowed Chair in the History Department; Dennis Reinhartz, associate professor of history; Preston Figley, a map dealer in Fort Worth; Richard Francaviglia, director of UTA’s Center for Greater Southwestern Studies and the History of Cartography; Robert S. Martin, director of the Texas State Library and Archives; Katherine Goodwin; and myself.

The donation of Mrs. Garrett’s map collection is a watershed event for Special Collections, the Libraries, and the University. With the gift, the University’s holdings of maps and other cartographic resources focusing on Texas and the Gulf Coast are some of the strongest in the nation. Recognizing this strength and hoping to build upon it, the University has committed to raising an endowment to adequately support the preservation, development, and enhancement of, and programming for, the collection. All of us associated with UTA and the UT System owe Virginia Garrett and her family a tremendous debt of gratitude!

What follows is a short article on Mrs. Garrett that we published in the gallery guide accompanying the exhibition. The article explains how Mrs. Garrett began her collecting activities and why she decided to donate her maps, at this time, to UTA. Elsewhere in this issue Katherine R. Goodwin, the cartographic archivist in Special Collections, discusses the strengths of the Garrett Collection and some of the many cartographic "gems" found in it. All of us associated with Special Collections encourage the readers of The Compass Rose to view the exhibition and use the Virginia Garrett map collection. You will not be disappointed!

Virginia Garrett has been fascinated with maps for as long as she can remember. She recalls in the late 1920s her father giving her road maps to look at to occupy her time on trips from their home in Fort Worth, Texas, to her grandparents’ house in Marlin, Texas, close to Waco. While this trip today takes less than two hours to drive, then it took from sun-up to sundown, and all the way a young Virginia was captured and captivated by maps. "Maps were like puzzles to me," she admits. "I was mightily impressed that someone, somewhere, had calculated how far it was from one town to the next and was able to display this graphically on a map."

Virginia Garrett never lost her fascination with maps. Indeed, her interest in maps and her marriage to Jenkins Garrett, an inveterate collector of books, manuscripts, and other historical materials, provided the impetus for her to begin collecting antiquarian maps. Today her collection consists of more than 900 maps focusing on Texas and the Gulf of Mexico, and is considered the largest such collection in private hands.

President Witt (left), chancellor Cunningham (center), and Mrs. Garrett after the ribbon cutting ceremony opening the exhibition, "The Cartographic Collections of Virginia Garrett.

Virginia Williams Garrett was born in Fort Worth on November 26, 1920, to John I. Williams and Bertha Kunze Williams. Virginia grew up in Fort Worth, graduating from Northside High School in 1937 and going on for comptometer training at Burroughs Training School after graduation. From 1938-1941, she worked in the Auditing Department of Continental Oil Company in downtown Fort Worth. On November 26, 1941, she married Jenkins Garrett, a young attorney who, at the time, was serving as a special agent for the FBI on the West Coast. During the early 1940s, Jenkins and Virginia lived in California. They returned to Texas in 1943, where her time was increasingly occupied caring for a growing family, which included a daughter, Dianne, born in 1943; another daughter, Donna, born in 1945; and a son, Jenkins, Jr., born in 1947.

While the children were small and her husband was building a career, Virginia had little time to think about maps. By the late 1950s, however, Jenkins had been "bitten by the collecting bug" and was aggressively amassing a book and manuscript collection focusing on Texas and the U. S. War with Mexico, 1846-1848. Jenkins’s passion for collecting prompted them to frequent bookstores during their travels both in the United States and abroad. To keep herself entertained while Jenkins sleuthed for books, Virginia began looking at maps and other cartographic material, such as atlases and geographies. Virginia was drawn to the maps that depicted Texas. She remembers purchasing her first Texas map some forty years ago in a small bookstore on Paris’s Left Bank. Like her husband, she too was bitten by the "collecting bug" after that first purchase.

Initially Mrs. Garrett had no collecting plan in mind; she simply acquired the Texas maps that caught her eye and those that would complement her husband’s book collection. Gradually, as she learned more about maps, mapmakers, and the history of cartography, her interest became more focused. She broadened her collecting focus to include maps depicting the land that would become Texas (as opposed to Texas as a political unit) and the Gulf of Mexico region. This enabled her to collect maps dating back as early as the 16th century, including those produced by the leading cartographers of the western world. She decided to use 1900 as the ending date for the sheet maps she collected, but she did build a collection of some 375 atlases published primarily in the late 19th and 20th century. She donated her atlas collection to UTA’s Cartographic History Library in 1990.

Jenkins Garrett (left), William Cunningham (center), and Robert Witt (right) examine a map in the exhibition.

Today Mrs. Garrett is known on both sides of the Atlantic as a knowledgeable and thoughtful collector. She and Jenkins are actively involved in state, national, and international map societies including Mrs. Garrett’s leadership in the establishment of the Texas Map Society; they have visited the finest map libraries in the U. S. and Europe; they have befriended and read the works of the leading scholars writing in cartographic history; and they continue to travel the world to add to the collection. After four decades, Mrs. Garrett’s map collection includes more than 900 maps, and virtually all of the leading mapmakers working during this four-century period are represented in it. In addition, the collection also includes lesser known cartographers and maps from smaller publishing houses, making it a collection that accurately reflects the evolution of the art, science, and knowledge of cartography over the centuries.

When asked about her favorite map, Mrs. Garrett replied, "The map in my hand at the time!" She does admit that she is especially fond of the stunningly beautiful maps produced during the 17th century, with their vivid colors and ornate cartouches. Also, she remains fascinated by the "ribbon maps" produced by British mapmaker John Ogilby in the 1600s. Looking back over her collection, she wishes now that she had acquired more town views or birds-eye view maps. Like most collectors, Mrs. Garrett derives great pleasure from the "thrill of the hunt" and the satisfaction received in finding an important map in an out-of-the-way shop.

Virginia Garrett has decided to present the collection to UTA so that it can be used by students, scholars, and other researchers. She and Jenkins have previously built significant collections and then selflessly given them to the university to make them available for students and researchers. They did this in 1974, when they donated Jenkins’s Texas and Mexican War materials; they did it seven years ago, when Mrs. Garrett gave the atlas collection; and they are doing it again in 1997, with the map collection. Mrs. Garrett believes the time is right to make the gift because the university is well positioned to effectively utilize it.

Virginia Garrett and Dr. Louis De Vorsey, Professor Emeritus, University of Georgia.

Indeed, in 1978 the UTA Libraries, with funds from the Sid W. Richardson Foundation of Fort Worth received largely through the efforts of the Garretts, established the Cartographic History Library. With the support and contributions of many others, they have built the library’s map collection to include some 7,000 maps, 1,400 atlases and geographies, and several thousand books and serials relating to the discovery and exploration of North America, the Greater Southwest, and Mexico. Moreover, UTA has created the Center for Greater Southwestern Studies and the History of Cartography and, through the generosity of the Richardson Foundation, the Jenkins and Virginia Garrett Endowed Chair in Southwestern Studies and the History of Cartography to ensure that the cartographic collection is used, that public programs are designed around it, and that both undergraduate and graduate courses are offered to take advantage of it.

While Mrs. Garrett admits that making the donation is like "giving your children away," she is confident that UTA will properly care for, develop, and promote the collection. The University of Texas at Arlington and The University of Texas System are indebted to Virginia and Jenkins Garrett for their ongoing generosity and for establishing a resource at UTA of inestimable value for students and scholars both now and in the future. If "every picture tells a story," then there are literally tens of thousands of stories to be told in the cartographic collections of Virginia Garrett.

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