Special Collections Division the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries Vol. XV * No. 1 * Spring  2001

A Geographic Truth
By Katherine R. Goodwin

Special Atlases, like this Fighting Yanks Around the World by Thomas Penfield, are a part of the Murray Hudson Collection.

In Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1793, Jedidiah Morse wrote, "The Science of Geography, like many other Sciences, is not stationary. So rapid are the improvements made in it by travelers and navigators—so fast do alterations and revolutions succeed each other, that it is not an easy matter for a Geographer to keep pace with them. What is this year a geographical truth, may the next year be a geographical error, and require correction." Morse would be as right today at the beginning of the twenty-first century as he was in the last years of the eighteenth with all the changes today’s world is experiencing. However, he left us a remarkable record of his world and time. His atlases and geographies are some of the most enlightening sources with which to view our past.

The Virginia Garrett Cartographic History Library (VGCL) recently acquired the Murray Hudson Atlas and Geography Collection. The collection consists of 626 items dating from 1736 to 1988. The majority of the materials come from the nineteenth century and constitute a significant addition to the founding goals of the VGCHL.

Murray Hudson is one of the nation’s leading collectors and dealers of atlases and geographies. A Tennessee native, Hudson has been collecting cartographic materials for the past thirty-five years and has been featured on a number of television programs focusing on noted collectors and collections. Twenty years ago, Hudson turned his passion into a business called Murray Hudson Books and Maps, which he operates out of a historic building in Halls, Tennessee.

The acquisition of the collection was made possible by the generosity of Hudson, who donated half of the items to the library, and a matching award from The University of Texas System. The atlases and geographies were delivered in the fall of 2000 and currently are being processed by Special Collections staff.

The Hudson Collection is divided into four parts: commercial atlases, school atlases, foreign and special atlases, and geographies. Commercial atlases comprise forty percent of the overall collection and include titles from leading U. S. atlas makers. Prominent are publications from Samuel Augustus Mitchell, George Cram, and some of the earliest productions of the Rand McNally Company. Commercial atlases were designed for a domestic American market eager to track territorial expansion and to exploit business opportunities in a rapidly growing nation. The commercial atlases, more than any other cartographic product, reflect the state-of-the-art in mapmaking in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The commercial atlases date from 1766 to 1988.

The school atlases date from 1804 to 1942 and comprise forty percent of the materials received. School atlases were used for teaching history, geography and culture-based studies, and reflect the mores and attitudes of the time. Many of these atlases are by the leading cartographic publishers of the day (e.g. Samuel Augustus Mitchell, Jesse Olney, and Sarah S. Cornell) and include detailed maps of the nation and its regions as well as map exercises for students.

Map and graphic of North America from Arbuckle's Illustrated Atlas of Fifty Principal Nations of the World (New York, 1890).

Foreign and special focus atlases account for twenty-three percent of the acquisition. These atlases include European productions as well as titles published in the United States of a thematic nature, such as touring and road atlases, war atlases, and historical atlases. Special atlases in particular reflect the political and diplomatic trends of an era, such as the war atlases produced for World War I and World War II, as well as the dramatic changes brought about by the automobile. Of particular interest is an 1890 edition of Arbuckle’s Illustrated Atlas of Fifty Principal Nations of the World, published in New York by Arbuckle Brothers. The atlas, unpaged and tied with cording, contains sheets with four chromolithographic views of different countries. The accompanying text is on the verso of the previous page. The edition is noted as an "early cigarette card-type coffee premium map series."

There are only four geography titles in the collection, and they date from 1749 to 1809, but the single most important item in the Hudson Collection can be found here. It is Jedidiah Morse’s groundbreaking work, American Geography: Or a View of the Present Situation of the United States, published in 1794 and includes twenty-five maps. Morse is considered the "father of American geography," having produced the first U. S. atlases and geographies shortly after the American Revolution. This 1794 edition acquired by Special Collections is one of only a few copies known to have all twenty-five maps, including some of the first dated maps of particular states.

The Murray Hudson Atlas and Geography Collection is a unique resource, reflecting the development of geographic knowledge from the time of the American Revolution to the late twentieth century. It is during this time period, which is so richly represented in the collection, that fledgling American cartographic businesses grew into an industry that rivaled and later supplanted the work being done in Europe. The school and commercial atlases depict a contemporary view of the development of the United States, and the foreign and special focus atlases, along with the geographies, offer unique additions to our current holdings. The Hudson Collection does not duplicate titles we currently hold, but rather complements areas where we lack depth, extends runs of specific mapmakers’ works, and enhances all of the holdings of the library. Acquisition of the Hudson Collection reinforces the goals of the VGCHL to preserve, catalog, provide access, and foster creative uses for cartographic materials.

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