Texas Map Society Spring Meeting:

All Over the Map

May 3-4, 2024

Austin, TX / Texas General land office

Hotel Information:

Hampton Inn & Suites Austin @ The University/Capitol (1701 Lavaca Street,Austin, TX 78701) – $184/Night

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Schedule

Friday, May 3 – Tours of Various Historical Map Collections at the University of Texas at Austin (Meet at Texas General Land Office Stephen F. Austin Building, Room 170 | 1700 N. Congress Ave., Austin, TX 78701 at 10:30 AM to Start Walking Tour)

  • 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM – Tour of the Harry Ransom Center Map Collection
  • 12:30 – 1:30 PM – Box Lunch
  • 1:30 – 3:00 PM – Tour of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History Map Collection
  • 3:30 – 5:00 PM – Tour of the LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections Map Collection
  • 5:15 – 6:15 – Pioneer Land Surveying of the Texas Capitol Mall with the Texas General Land Office Surveying Services Division

Saturday, May 4 – Texas General Land Office, Stephen F. Austin Building, Room 170 (1700 N. Congress Ave., Austin, TX 78701)

  • 8:00 AM – Doors Open / Check-in
  • 9:00 – 9:15 AM – Opening Remarks by Texas Map Society President James Harkins
  • 9:15 – 9:45 AM – Dr. Lila Rakoczy, GLO Education and Outreach Team Leader, Public History and Mapping in the GLO Archives and Records
  • 9:45 – 10:15 AM – Rachel Mochon, Paper Conservator at the Harry Ransom Center, Historic Map Conservation and the Bleau Map
  • 10:15 – 10:45 AM – Coffee Break
  • 10:45 – 11:15 AM – Dr. Michael Wise – Seeing Like a Stomach: Food, the Body, and Jeffersonian Exploration in the Near Southwest, 1804–1808
  • 11:15 – 12:00 PM – Student Panel
    • Abigail Cassity, Stephen F. Austin State University – African Cartography during the Dutch Golden Age
    • Madeline Wheeler, Stephen F. Austin State University – The Cassini Map of France: Triangulation and the Cartography of Absolutism
    • Dion Kauffman, University of Texas at Austin – Cartographic Accessibility: Processing the Stephen F. Austin Historical Map Collection at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History
  • 12:00 – 1:00 PM – Lunch
  • 1:00 – 1:45 PM – Dr. Alistair Maeer, Texas Weslayan University, and President of the Society for the History of Discovery – At the Water’s Edge: Rediscovering Charles Wylde and England’s 17th-century Maritime World
  • 1:45 – 2:30 PM – Dr. Joaquin Rivaya-Martinez – Indigenous Borderlands: Native Agency, Resilience, and Power in the Americas
  • 2:30 – 3:15 PM – Dr. Imre Demhardt – Puerto Rico and the Spanish-American War of 1898: Perceptions and Maps of a Caribbean Island
  • 3:15 – 3:30 PM – Texas Map Society Business Meeting
  • 3:30 – 4:30 PM – Tour of the Texas General Land Office Map Collection

About Presentations

  • Dr. Lila Rakoczy, GLO Education and Outreach Team Leader, Putting the Map in StoryMaps: Public Outreach at the Texas General Land Office
    • The collections of the Texas General Land Office (GLO) Archives consist of 45,000 maps spanning six centuries and millions of land-related documents. In 2020, the Texas General Land Office (GLO) created Texas Hidden History, an ambitious initiative to reveal through visual storytelling the “hidden” layers of significance of items. The result has been seven (and counting) ArcGIS StoryMaps on a wide range of Texas history topics. The medium provides historical context, and for younger and especially visual learners, the inclusion of web maps, images, interactive elements, and even multimedia make for a more engaging learning experience. One especially exciting element has been the integration of geographic information system (GIS) maps created by GLO interns and staff. This presentation provides an overview of these diverse projects and a glimpse of those in development.
  • Rachel Mochon, Paper Conservator at the Harry Ransom Center, The Preservation and Conservation of Maps at the University of Texas at Austin
    • The Preservation & Conservation Division at the Harry Ransom Center (HRC) addresses the needs of a diverse collection of over 50 million items through preventive care, conservation treatment, research, and education. A leading humanities research center with an active reading room and exhibition galleries, the Ransom Center collection includes fine artwork, photography, books, manuscripts, and maps. Beginning in 2021, the Center spearheaded a new Campus Conservation Initiative (CCI) to support the conservation treatment of holdings in major UT Austin collection repositories, such as the UT Libraries and the Briscoe Center for American History. In library, archival, and artistic collections, maps serve a range of functions and possess varying informational values. Some maps were made to be folded and put in the pocket of a traveler, while others were intended to be framed and hung for decorative purposes. These functions, assignments of value, and the physical nature of these items inform how conservators approach their care and conservation treatment. To highlight these ranging considerations, this presentation will discuss the conservation treatment of several maps in the collections of the Ransom Center, the Briscoe Center for American History, and the Benson Latin American Collection. The case studies will cover issues of rolled versus flat storage, maps bound in books, digitization, and framing.
  • Dr. Michael Wise – Seeing Like a Stomach: Food, the Body, and Jeffersonian Exploration in the Near Southwest, 1804–1808
  • Student Panel
    • Abigail Cassity, Stephen F. Austin State University – African Cartography during the Dutch Golden Age
      • For centuries, most of the continent of Africa had been unknown to explorers in terms of both land and culture. Seventeenth-century cartography showed how the West viewed Africa as a curiosity with civilizations and cultures that were being newly explored by Europeans. The Africæ nova descriptio by Willem Janszoon Blaeu is a fascinating example of this shift in the portrayal of Africa during the Early Modern Period. This paper addresses the culture of cartography during the Dutch Golden Age and the techniques that Blaeu used to influence consumer sales of his maps such as using allegory for aesthetics. This paper also looks at the trends of documenting the continent of Africa and its inhabitants during a time when Europeans were curious about the unknown associated with the country. Analyzing the Africæ nova descriptio provides insight into the cartographer’s techniques, the geopolitical understanding of Africa, and the trends of the Dutch Golden Age.
    • Madeline Wheeler, Stephen F. Austin State University – The Cassini Map of France: Triangulation and the Cartography of Absolutism
      • Taking a step back to look at the complex work of mapmaking that is the Cassini Map of France reveals the advancements of cartography, mathematics, geodesy, and astronomy up to the 18th century. Four generations of one family and the patronage of French royalty, combined with the Royal Academy of Science, produced not only a near perfect map of France, but the most accurate map of any place on Earth at the time. The map was so accurate that it could only be rivaled by satellite images 300 years later. The publication of the map, nearly 100 years after the start of its creation, influenced other countries to invest in accurate cartography. The world began to come together in way that had not been seen before. The accuracy of the Cassini map of France changed expectations set on cartographers, shifted the role maps had in government, and elevated the necessity of maps being a symbol of power. This paper aims to explore the relationship between power and how one sees the world on a map. Currently historiography focuses on the science behind triangulation and while no one can deny the influence this technique would have on cartography, this map also offers a unique insight into the absolutist age. This paper hopes to encourage historians to consider cartography when looking at how a group of people sees the rest of the world and how maps can be representative of their philosophy and culture.
    • Dion Kauffman, University of Texas at Austin – Cartographic Accessibility: Processing the Stephen F. Austin Historical Map Collection at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History
      • Currently, the Briscoe Center contains some 32,000 printed and manuscript maps, many of which are only searchable in a digitized card catalog. A portion of these maps come from the personal collection of Stephen F. Austin, a Texas colonizer, empresario, and statesman behind Austin’s Colony, the first and largest Anglo-American settlement in Mexican Texas. In order to increase access to these cartographic resources, I devised my Master degree capstone project around processing the Stephen F. Austin map collection and creating a finding aid to accompany it. This presentation will describe the research and development behind this endeavor, general guidelines for processing similar map collections, and current standards for preservation storage.
  • Dr. Alistair Maeer – At the Water’s Edge: Rediscovering Charles Wylde and England’s 17th-century Maritime World
    • Born in 1620 to a life primed to the sea, Charles Wylde ranks among the earliest English overseas chart-makers. Apprenticed to one of the most prolific and respected nautical cartographers in London, Nicholas Comberford in 1637, Wylde went on to chart distant shores as both an East India Company and Royal Navy officer. As the only known formally trained English nautical cartographer to go to sea in the latter 17th century, his charts are unique expressions of English expectations and knowledge.  In addition, surviving logbooks and journals describe his voyages and charts, valued experiences reinforced by letters from Samuel Pepys, the great 17th century London chronicler and leading naval administrator.  By the time of his death in 1683, he had not only served in the EIC, trained four apprentices, but had also captained nine different Royal Navy warships.  Alas, Charles Wylde is still an unknown; yet he ought to be remembered, especially since his surviving charts and journals offer distinct vantage points to gaze upon the dawn of English charting, expansionism, and imperial aspirations.  Clearly, the rediscovery of Wylde is long overdue.  This presentation aims to introduce you to an array of his charts and highlight what they reveal about England’s maritime world. 
  • Dr. Joaquin Rivaya-Martinez – Indigenous Borderlands: Native Agency, Resilience, and Power in the Americas
    • Despite the initial upheavals caused by the European intrusion in the Western Hemisphere, Native people often thrived after contact, preserving their sovereignty, territory, and culture, and shaping Indigenous borderlands across the Americas. Borderlands, in this context, are spaces where diverse populations interact, cross-cultural exchanges are frequent and consequential, and no polity or community holds dominion. Within the Indigenous borderlands of the Americas, Native peoples exercised considerable power, often retaining control of the land, and remaining paramount agents of historical transformation after the European intrusion. Conversely, European conquest and colonialism were typically slow and incomplete, as the newcomers struggled to assert their authority and implement policies designed to subjugate Native societies and change their beliefs and practices. In this presentation, I will discuss some of those processes in selected Indigenous borderlands with the help of historical and modern maps.
  • Dr. Imre Demhardt – Puerto Rico and the Spanish-American War of 1898: Perceptions and Maps of a Caribbean Island
    • While Texas voluntarily joined the United States and greatly benefitted, the island of Puerto Rico was forcefully annexed in 1898 but as a still ‘unincorporated territory’ received little attention. During the nineteenth century and still under Spanish sovereignty Puerto Rico made a modest economic progress and, unlike Cuba, ultimately even achieved limited self-governance. When the United States set its imperialist eyes on Cuba and the Philippines, Puerto Rico was a mere appendix. American forces landed in July 1898 and by the next month had ‘liberated’ autonomous Puerto Rico and turned it into a de facto colony. Because of the inability of the conquerors to trace significant Spanish topographic maps of Puerto Rico, they embarked on mid- and large-scale maps of the island, which, however, turned out to be a sort of reinvention of the wheel.
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