Top of page
Posted by: Sonia Kahn
Many of us have heard the tale of Mrs. O’Leary’s infamous cow as the driver of one of Chicago’s greatest disasters. Whether or not the beast did in fact start the blaze may never be known, but the fact remains that the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 decimated the city over a three day period …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, American History, City Histories
Posted by: Meagan Snow
Andersonville Prison, arguably the most horrific Confederate prison for Union soldiers, was constructed in 1864 during the US Civil War and was located a little over a hundred miles south of Atlanta, Georgia. The prison was constructed as an open-air stockade with walls made of pine logs at least fifteen feet high. During its fourteen …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, American History
Posted by: Amelia Raines
Old maps are fantastic windows into history. If you want to know what the world was like 100, 200, or 500 years ago, you can look at a map published at that time and see where borders were located, what places were named, and what the land looked like (at least, to the degree of …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, American History, Borders
Posted by: Julie Stoner
This is a guest post by Britt Long, Detailed Reference Librarian in the Geography and Map Division. Since the founding of the United States of America, our country has been in the import and export business. We have bartered and traded goods across land and sea, developing systems of transportation that are both innovative and …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, American History, Guest Posts
Posted by: Cynthia Smith
Below is an image of an embroidered map from the collections of the Geography and Map Division. The name of the embroiderer, Sophia Mason, is stitched at the bottom of the map; the year 1802 is printed beneath her name. From the 18th to the early 19th century, American and British school girls received their …
Posted in: 18th century cartography, 19th century cartography, Women's History
Posted by: Meagan Snow
Flow maps are characterized by representing direction and amount of movement between an origin and a destination – and Charles Joseph Minard is widely regarded as the first cartographer who mastered the art of the flow map. He is best known for his flow map of Napolean’s 1812 invasion of Russia titled “Carte figurative des …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, American History
Posted by: Meagan Snow
Today it’s easy to check the weather without even leaving the house: hourly predictions for rain, wind, temperature, and humidity are available to most of us through our phones at the touch of a button. Warnings for severe weather flash across our screens to help keep us safe – but how did we get here? …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, 20th century cartography, Geographic Information Science
Posted by: Julie Stoner
The most heavily used collection in the Geography and Map Division are the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, a collection of large-scale, building level maps, dating from 1867 to the present which depict the commercial, industrial, and residential sections of some 12,000 cities and towns in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The Sanborn collection includes about …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, 20th century cartography, City Histories
Posted by: Mike Klein
In September 1821 a Connecticut educator by the name of William Channing Woodbridge introduced his "Moral and Political Chart of the Inhabited World," classifying the earth's inhabitants by cultural hierarchies.
Posted in: 19th century cartography, American History