High-Profile Road Trip for Virginia Garrett Map Collection

Whether you are the sort who orders a state map from www.traveltex.com to drive around Texas, or are an armchair traveler who luxuriates in the wealth of maps available online in virtual domains, travelers who wanted to take a road trip through time had a rare opportunity this spring when the Bob Bullock State History Museum’s exhibit Drawn from Experience: Landmark Maps of Texas opened in Austin. This isn’t your ordinary accordion-fold gas station map trip. Visualize instead a yellowed 1595 map by famed mapmaker Michael Mercator, with subtle pinks, greens, and yellows depicting political boundaries in the New World. This is just one several dozen UTA maps that traveled to Austin this spring. Mercator’s America Sive India Nova, along with Zebulon Pike’s 1810 A Map of the Internal Provinces of New Spain and Alexander von Humboldt’s 1810 A Map of New Spain were there. Also on view was Arrowsmith’s 1842 Map of Texas in which he erroneously reports of the Texas Panhandle that “This tract of Country Explored by Le Grand in 1833 is naturally fertile well wooded & with a fair proportion of water.”

These and other map heavyweights are all part of the Virginia Garrett Cartographic History Library in UTA Libraries’ Special Collections. Drawn not only by talented cartographers for armies and travelers alike, but also by soldiers and presidents and printed for colonels and kings, the maps sent to Austin tell the complex story of Texas and it’s place in the New World. Nearly 60 of UTA Libraries’ maps were on loan to the Bullock Museum, demonstrating not only what a fine map collection UTA owns, but what a fine collection is possible when ardent and dedicated collectors are also donors, who do their collecting with a large audience in mind. The exhibit ran from February 19 to June 5, 2005, in Austin, Texas. Among the important maps on display, some dating as far back as 500 years, the lion’s share came from UTA. It was sponsored by Stewart Title Guaranty Company and the Summerlee Foundation, with additional underwriting from the Texas State History Museum Foundation.

The concept and planning for Landmark Maps of Texas took over two and a half years, according to Dr. Dennis Reinhartz, one of four UTA organizers of the exhibit. Reinhartz, a Professor of History at UTA, worked on this travelling cartographic collection with Kit Goodwin, an archivist in UTA Libraries’ Special Collections, Dr. Richard Francaviglia, history professor and head of the Center for Greater Southwestern Studies and the history of Cartography, and Gerald Saxon, history professor and Dean of the UTA Libraries. They were joined by J.C. Martin, director of the Texas State Historical Association, and former head of UTA Libraries’ Special Collections from 1975 to 1979. Ninety percent of the maps in the exhibit came from the UTA collection, according to Reinhartz, who said that the remainder are on loan from the Nettie Lee Benson Center, the Library of Congress, and a few private collectors. The largest map in the exhibit was a digital version of the 1507 Waldseemüller World Map. The copy is provided by the Library of Congress, which bought the original at the cost of $15 million. The importance of this map lies in its earliest mention of “America” on a printed map. In distinct contrast to this large view of the colonial world were the maps, or “pinturas,” produced by American Indian artists under Spanish direction. These landscape maps were prepared as a portion of a report to represent the Spanish empire in the 16th century, according to Reinhartz. The pinturas are on loan from the Nettie Lee Benson Center, a part of the UT Libraries. The Waldseemüller map visited UTA in 2002 as part of the Texas Map Society meeting and the biennial Virginia Garrett Lectures on the History of Cartography. The Waldseemüller map is also the oldest in the exhibit, the most recent is a 2003 map generated in the search for space shuttle debris.

Each curator selected the best examples available to illustrate their portions of the exhibit, representing an era in Texas history. The categories are “Exploration, Empire, and Enlightenment,” “Age of the Entradas,” “Republic of Mexico: Provincias Internas,” “Republic of Texas,” “U.S. – Mexican War,” “Statehood,” and “Federal Presence.” Other maps are also exhibited under “Maps of the Gulf” and “Modern Mapping.”

When cartographic experts are given a chance to display such important works, it should come as no surprise that some of their particular favorite maps can be found in the exhibition. Each map curator had a story to tell and had a central map around which to work, or a favorite map that was included in the exhibit. For Gerald Saxon, Dean of UTA Libraries, that map was the Disturnell 1847 Mapa de los Estados Unidos de Mejico. This map “was based on earlier maps,” in such a way that they simply “copied information from older maps onto the new one and published it as their own,” according to Saxon. The resulting Disturnell map, borrowed wholesale from an 1828 map by White Gallager y White, “misplaced” El Paso by a half-degree to the north, resulting in years of boundary disputes. “The question was, do they start negotiations from where El Paso is on the map or where it is on the ground?” According to Saxon, the settlement was ultimately a political one, with the 1853 Gadsden Purchase figuring prominently in the final outcome. Another war was avoided.

Among the treasures on view at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum’s exhibition, “Drawn from Experience: Landmark Maps of Texas” is an extraordinary map that has been called “America’s birth certificate.” The digital reproduction of the one-of-a-kind map is from the Library of Congress and was produced in 1507 by Martin Waldseemüller. The St. Die priest, scholar and publisher compiled information for the map at a time of rapidly expanding knowledge of world geography that was spurred by the explorations of Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci and others. The Waldseemüller map is the earliest document known to contain the word “America” and to feature two major oceans, not just one. In addition, it does contain a landmass that will eventually include Texas! Plans are underway for the future housing of this Waldseemüller digital reproduction map at UTA for study and research.

--Kit Goodwin

Politics of a different sort figured in the creation of Kit Goodwin’s favorite map in the collection. The Special Collections archivist said, after commenting that choosing a favorite map is like “stating which of your children you love more,” that the map that tickled her archivist’s fancy in this exhibit is the Map of the State of Coahuila and Texas by William Hooker. The map appeared in Mary Austen Holley’s 1836 book Texas, Observations, Historical, Geographical and Descriptive. “This is a little map, and most people won’t ever look at it, but I love this little map.” Mary Holley was Stephen F. Austen’s cousin, and after a trip to Texas, wrote the above-mentioned book. When it came time to choose the map, she learned Austen’s publisher refused access so she was not going to be able to use her cousin’s map. She approached journeyman cartographer Hooker to create a map to fill the void.

“What he did was put roads in there, and the miles between things. This is the first time I’ve seen any of that added. Usually they don’t tell you how far you had to travel,” Goodwin said, remarking that “it’s like the triple A [American Automobile Association] maps, but here’s the same thing in 1836!”

For Dennis Reinhartz, the two editions of Abraham Ortelius Americas map from the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum were very important. “They show the results of the Spanish entradas into the Greater Southwest, and between them you can see what Ortelius came to know about the New World over time. And through him what parts of the Old World public came to know.”

J.C. Martin favored some of the charts in the exhibit, in particular a 1646 chart called “Carta Particolare della Baia de Messico con la Costa” by an Englishman living in Italy, Sir Robert Dudley. This chart is in an atlas called Secrets of the Sea and “is one of the most beautiful charts I’ve seen. These are beautiful examples of the art of engraving.”

Richard Francaviglia took a giant step from the previous Earth-bound mapmakers, and highlighted modern geographers and cartographers’ understanding of Texas when viewed from space. His favorite map among these was photographic rendering called “Texas From Space.” This satellite map, on loan to the exhibit by Gerald Saxon, was produced by M-SAT Corporation of Rockville, Maryland, and dates from 1998. This map gave Francaviglia the big picture he needed to ground his examination of a collection of maps that add up to an environmental examination of Texas. Oil and gas production, tourism, and the most recent space shuttle disaster were all subjects of the maps he selected. In his exhibit remarks, Francaviglia describes this map:

Indeed, the entire exhibit “Drawn from Experience” represents many “revolutions” in mapmaking and Texas history. In her concluding remarks in an article about the exhibit in the spring 2005 edition of UTA Magazine, Goodwin notes “These maps reflect the advancement of scientific knowledge, the power and conquest of nations, the skill and artistry of famous mapmakers, and the technical mapping innovations that unfolded over centuries.”

To see some of the maps mentioned in this article, visit the UTA Libraries virtual map library at http://libraries.uta.edu/ccon/mapSearch.shtm .The Virginia Garrett Cartographic History Library, founded in 1978, holds thousands of maps. Focusing on five centuries of exploration and mapping of the New World, the VGCHL places particular emphasis on the region of the Gulf Coast and the Greater Southwest. For more information, visit http://library.uta.edu/Main/spcoMaps.uta .