Pictured above is the earliest dated American-made globe. It is housed in the Geography and Map Division. Created in 1811 by James Wilson, the first commercial globemaker in the United States, it is made of paper gores over papier-mâché and plaster. It sits in a wooden stand with four legs supporting a wooden circle with mounted zodiacal paper and a brass meridian ring. The globe is 34 centimeters (about 13.5 inches) in diameter and is commonly referred to as a 13-inch globe.

Below is a photograph of a second copy of the 1811 Wilson globe, also held in the Geography and Map Division. Likewise, it is made of paper gores over papier-mâché and plaster, but it was re-mounted in 1902, and the original wooden stand was replaced with an iron one.

James Wilson was born in Londonderry, New Hampshire, in 1763. As an adult, he lived in Vermont, where he worked as a farmer and blacksmith. In 1795, on a trip to visit a close cousin, he stopped at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he encountered, likely for the first time, a pair of English celestial and terrestrial globes. This timely encounter likely sparked his desire to create his own globes. Within a year, Wilson had purchased land near his cousin in Bradford, Vermont, at the confluence of the Connecticut and Waits Rivers, and had completed his first hand-drawn globe. To learn more on the biography of James Wilson check out this 2015 Worlds Revealed blogpost. 

Globes as we understand them today, spherical models of the earth or the celestial sky produced commercially using print technology, date back to the early 16th century. The idea that the earth is a sphere, and the use of spherical maps as learning tools, can be traced back much further, to the ancient Greeks. The earliest surviving globe, the Atlante Farnese (Farnese Atlas), is believed to be a Roman copy of a Greek original. A carved marble celestial globe carried by Atlas, it is estimated to date back to the 2nd century. (And, it stands over seven feet tall!) Shown below is a sterograph of the marble scuplture by Giorgio Sommer and Edmond Behles, German-born photographers with a prominent photography studio in Italy in the 19th century.

During the 2nd century, Claudius Ptolemaeus, known as Ptolemy, an astronomer, geographer, and mathematician of Greek descent who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, compiled all the geographic knowledge of the known world at the time. One of his seminal works Geographia used a spherical coordinate system and a grid or graticule made up of lines of latitude and longitude to plot the locations of 8,000 places. His model of the universe, commonly known as the Ptolemaic system, and explained in Almagest, places a static Earth at the center of the planets and stars. Ptolemy’s system would remain the widely accepted model until the mid-17th century when it was eclipsed by the Copernican solar system.

Fast forward to the 16th century, when print technology and the desire to learn more about geography through navigation and exploration greatly increased the distribution and circulation of globes (as well as maps and charts). Globes were often made as a pair, one terrestrial and one celestial, and together were considered a standard or common globe. The standard globe was typically accompanied by a manual or guide. To learn more about the history of globe making during the Early Modern period, read my colleague Abraham Parrish’s blog post on globe gores.

By the early 18th century, globe making was a well-established enterprise in London, and by the end of the century it had spread across Europe. Globes were highly desired as educational tools and as symbols of knowledge and status, and academic institutions, which were growing in number in the United States, needed them. However, no one was manufacturing globes on the American continent and it was expensive to purchase and import globes from across the Atlantic.

James Wilson saw this lack of American-made globes as a business opportunity and built on his skills to make his own. He made the globe sphere, engraved the copper plates, and printed the globe gores himself (he even made his own ink and glue!). In about 1810, Wilson crafted his first globes in Bradford, Vermont, and by 1813 he had established the first globe-making factory in the United States. Demand for the domestically produced globes was high.

Wilson identified Albany, New York, as an ideal location for a second factory. With the help of his oldest sons, Samuel, John, and David, he established an Albany branch where they produced globes of 3-inch, 9-inch, and 13-inch diameters. The 13-inch globe cost $50 at the time. This branch was known as J. Wilson & Sons and was located at 110 Washington Street. The pair of Wilson globes pictured below were manufactured in Albany.

By 1827, J. Wilson & Sons had so perfected its engraving of North America that it was superior to the London engravings. Wilson came to Washington, DC, to promote his globes to Congress. His business card stated “now exhibiting for public inspection at the United States Library” a pair of 13-inch globes, made by “the original manufacturer of Globes in this country, and has brought the art to such a degree of perfection, as to supersede altogether the necessity of importation of that article from abroad.”

Come by the Geography and Map Division reading room to view these important artifacts of American history!

Learn more:

About James Wilson’s life by reading his personal papers at the University of Vermont Libraries, Special Collections Repository.

Elly Dekker and Peter van Der Krogt. 1993. “Globes from the Western World.” London: Zwemmer.

Kimball, LeRoy Elwood, and American Antiquarian Society. 1938.”James Wilson of Vermont, American’s First Globe Master.” Worcester, Massachusetts: The Society.

Mapping Biogeography will feature origami and globe-making crafts, a display of plant and animal-themed collection items from across the Library, and a talk by Dr. Walter Jetz of Yale University on ecosystem mapping and the geographical challenges of biodiversity conservation.

The landscapes and ecosystems we call home are made up of thousands of species which we share with other parts of the world. The biological life support system for our planet has an intricate geography made up of myriad entities, each with its own spatial distribution and time dynamics. This geography of life remains surprisingly little understood but is now rapidly getting altered by humans. This talk by Dr. Walter Jetz of Yale University will illustrate the data and technology innovations required to help fill these vast blank spots and develop a global map of life. Made up of hundreds of thousands of unique biological layers that change over time, this map offers new scientific and cartographic challenges but is vital for valuing and conserving biodiversity.

In celebrating the 27th annual GIS Day, of which the Library of Congress is a founding sponsor, the Geography and Map Division and our friends across the Library are proud to support this event.

Mapping Biogeography will take place as part of Live! At The Library, inviting the public to explore our exhibits, collections and programs in the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building and offering happy hour snacks and drinks for purchase in the Great Hall.

Tickets are required for this Live! At The Library event. These tickets can be reserved here.

You can reserve a ticket for Dr. Jetz’s talk here. This ticket also provides access to the Live! At The Library event.

Event Schedule

All event activities will take place in the Thomas Jefferson Building (10 First Street SE, Washington, D.C.).

• 5pm to 8pm in the Great Hall: Paper globe-making and origami crafts!

• 5pm to 6:30pm in the Whittall Pavilion: Display of biodiversity-themed collection items from across the Library.

• 6:30pm to 7:30pm in the Coolidge Auditorium: Dr. Walter Jetz, “Putting Biodiversity on the Map: Toward a Global Map of Life.”

Dr. Walter Jetz

Dr. Walter Jetz is Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University where he directs the Yale Center for Biodiversity and Global Change. He leads Map of Life, a platform addressing global species populations and their change, and is a winner of the XPRIZE Rainforest competition. He co-chairs the Species Population Working Group of the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON). For the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), he was member and co-manager of the Task Force on Data and Knowledge, chaired the Task Group on Indicators and was Lead Author of the Global Assessment. For the Convention on Biological Diversity, he is an advisory expert assessing the collective progress in the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

Date: Tuesday, October 13, 2026

Time: 3:00-4:00 pm (Eastern)

Location: Online

Register for this session here!

This orientation session will highlight the Division’s collections of geospatial data, born-digital maps, and georeferenced maps, as well as special collections in the History of Computer Cartography. The session will also feature cartographic products created by the Division, including web mapping applications, and be followed by a Q&A session with Division specialists in geographic information systems (GIS).

The expanding Russian Empire, whose news and maps of Siberia and the Russian Far East were relayed with great interest to European and American audiences, started to make it clear over the course of the 19th century that there was no way (with the technology of the time) to travel a Northwest Passage. However, that did not assuage the appetite for getting to know this part of the world better, because now it was not just about trade, but also science. As my colleague Abraham described in his recent blog post Mapping Magnetism, explorers of the 19th century transitioned from being interested in the Northwest Passage to being interested in polarity, magnetism, and the true location of the Earth’s geomagnetic poles. The race to discover the North Pole became a point of pride for many countries and their intrepid scientists, with equally tragic misfortune for some of them as the search for the Northwest Passage had wrought.

I recently answered an Ask a Librarian question from a researcher about one of those ill-fated voyages, the 1879 USS Jeannette expedition. It’s a grisly story full of untimely deaths, not only of those onboard the Jeannette but also those onboard the search party ships that came to find them. It became a sensational news story to the world and eventually several books recounted the saga, including In the Lena Delta, which was written by the surviving Chief Engineer George Melville, and a later publication called Round About the North Pole, which recounted the various unsuccessful attempts before the ultimately successful attempt to reach the North Pole by Roald Amundsen in 1906. While the stated mission of the voyagers on the Jeannette was not successful, to put it mildly, the survivors captivated the world with stories of Siberia, a place that very few people in Europe or North America had ever seen or would ever see. Melville described the indigenous Yakuts people they encountered – who helped save their lives, it should be noted – as well as vast herds of reindeer and many other unfamiliar animals they encountered. What most caught my eye about this part of the story was how they arrived in Siberia: they had made it to their intended route by finding and traversing the delta of the Lena River, the largest river delta in the Arctic and one of the longest rivers in the world.

As it happens, this was a good idea, and they were certainly not the first to try it. Russian explorers had generally followed two sets of routes over their centuries of imperial territory expansion, by either sailing along the Siberian rivers from south to north towards the Arctic Ocean, or by sailing east from the White Sea (near Finland) across the Arctic Ocean and doing the opposite, entering those same rivers at their deltas and sailing south. By the end of the 18th century, scientists not only from Russia but also Western and Central Europe were filling in the map, so to speak, of Russia’s eastern regions and bringing specimens of many new plants and animals back with them.

Sadly, many of the animals they described have now been hunted to extinction, mainly for their furs and other byproducts. However, even today, the Lena River Delta has magnificent biodiversity, and it has been transformed into a wildlife refuge as a key site for many migratory birds and animals that are rare elsewhere on the planet.

If you read my previous blog post, you know that I am fascinated by the science of river deltas. Their large fanning shape makes them spread water, silt, and nutrients into unique landscapes and unusual ecosystems. You can see their marvelous forms from outer space, and they’re amazing up close too. While I was looking for images related to the delta in Library collections, I enjoyed encountering pages from digitized books about the wildlife of the area, including the Arctic Tern that I couldn’t resist referring to in my post title.

I had not realized that ecologically abundant river deltas could be a cold water/weather phenomenon as well as warm until I learned about the Jeannette expedition. There’s always more to learn, and we reference librarians are always happy to help, and always grateful for what we learn from our researchers as well.

I leave you with a detail from a beautiful early 20th century Russian zoological map in our collection. Our copy in the Geography and Map Division is not scanned, but thanks to the World Digital Library you can see this digitized version of a copy held by the Russian National Library. Enjoy!

Learn More:

• For more about the history of the Northwest Passage and the explorers who went looking for it, see the following posts:
  • Mapping the Arctic Explorations of Sir John Ross
  • The Arctic Voyage of HMS Investigator, 1850-54
  • Today in History: Meriwether Lewis
  • Expedition of the Ship Jeannette to the North Pole
• For more about Russian exploration of the Arctic, Siberia, and the Russian Far East, see the following articles:
  • Meeting of Frontiers: The Russian Discovery of Siberia
  • Meeting of Frontiers: Exploration and Science
• For more about the science of the Lena River Delta, see The Arctic’s Largest Delta
• For more about the amazing cross-planet migration of the Arctic Tern, see the Arctic Tern entry from All About Birds

Dr. Blum, what have you been working on during your fellowship period in the Geography & Map Division?

For the past two months, I’ve been searching for every example I can find where Americans, Britons, French, Spanish, and Indigenous peoples recorded population numbers on maps, globes, charts, and other visual materials. My research explores how people—and especially the numbers of people—became one of the primary ways nations formed governments and understood themselves during the late 1700s and early 1800s, the precise moment of the formation and development of the United States. In other words, I’m interested in how “We, the People” was transformed into data and then represented visually.

I’m examining how population was visualized to convey power, value, and difference, and how people were divided into categories based on race, legal status, gender, age, and location. By working with hundreds of maps, atlases, globes, almanacs, censuses, government publications, letters, and diaries, I’ve been tracing the emergence of a new way of seeing society: one in which counting people and displaying those counts became central to governance, representation, and national identity.

I could not possibly quantify the value of my time at the Library of Congress, and especially in the Geography and Map Division. The materials will help me demonstrate in my writing and teaching how maps and other visual materials transformed population data into a powerful visual language of government and nationalism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Have you found a favorite map yet?

Choosing a favorite map is almost impossible, because I’ve examined dozens that transformed my view of American history. But if I had to pick one, it would be this early nineteenth-century map of the United States from the 1839 Smith’s atlas. At first glance, it looks like a beautifully engraved national map.

A closer look, though, reveals something much more innovative: population figures are printed directly onto the states, while circles with numbers within them, show the populations of major cities.

What I love about this map is that it brings together two very different kinds of knowledge. Geography tells us where places are; census data tells us who lives there. Today, combining those two forms of information seems completely natural—we see it every time we open a digital map or browse demographic data online. But in the early nineteenth century, this was a remarkably new way of representing a nation. For me, this map captures an important historical moment when Americans began to understand that the country could be measured not only by its territory but also by its people. By merging maps with population statistics, it showed that counting people had become essential to how the United States represented itself—to its own citizens and to the rest of the world.

Have you encountered any twists, turns, or surprises during your research process since arriving at the Library?

So many! Honestly, my time at the Library of Congress hasn’t just enriched the book I’m working on—it has fundamentally reshaped it. I arrived with a clear research plan, but the collections kept revealing questions and connections I hadn’t anticipated.

One example involves the appearance—or rather disappearance—of Native American names on maps. I began tracking when European and American mapmakers identified Native nations, towns, and communities, and the patterns I found were both surprising and revealing. I won’t give away too much because it has become a major part of the book, but it has led me to think about the Constitution’s exclusion of “Indians not taxed” in a much broader context. That constitutional language was connected to larger changes in the ways Native Americans were represented (or erased) within emerging American information systems.

Another surprise came from British maps produced after the American Revolution. Although British political leaders lamented the loss of the colonies, many mapmakers continued to label North America, including the territory of the new United States, as part of the “British Empire” in bold, unmistakable print. It was a fascinating reminder that maps do more than describe the world—they also express claims about it. The British Empire continued throughout the world after American Independence, but some Britons had a hard time letting go.

Finally, I’ve been struck by how quickly European mapmakers began incorporating population statistics into their own maps. Historians often describe Europe as leading the quantitative revolution, but the materials I’ve seen suggest that the early United States played a much more significant role than we often recognize, especially in finding new ways to visualize people and population. That has been one of the most exciting discoveries of my fellowship.

It’s been wonderful to have you in residence. Do you have any tips for other researchers or future Philip Lee Phillips Society Fellows who may come to do research at the Library of Congress?

The biggest lesson I learned is that people are the Library of Congress’s greatest resource – by leaps and bounds. Search engines are wonderful. Online catalogs are amazing. Digital collections have made so much research possible. But none of them comes close to the knowledge, creativity, and generosity of the librarians, curators, and directors, especially in the Geography and Map Division.

Some of the most important discoveries I made didn’t begin with a keyword search. They came from conversations. [G&M staff members] Julie and Lena would ask, “Have you looked at this?” Carissa or Amelia would wonder, “What if you approached it this way?” Melissa asked if anything needed to be found or purchased! Paulette shared her dissertation with me and then walked me through French cartography as if I were getting a TED Talk. Abraham shared insights from his knowledge of nineteenth-century maps. Sundeep mentioned a few collections I had never heard of. And Meagan… just the best guide a scholar could want. Those back-and-forth exchanges led me to maps and collections I never would have found on my own, helped me refine my questions, and often sent me in entirely new—and much better—directions.

As someone who studies information systems, my experience was especially meaningful. We’re living through an extraordinary moment in the development of artificial intelligence and digital search tools, and they’ve become an important part of my own research. But my fellowship hammered home time and again that expertise, curiosity, and human conversation cannot be replaced. If there’s one piece of advice I’d give a future researcher, it’s this: don’t rely exclusively on the catalog or what’s digitized—talk to the people who know it best. That’s where the real magic happens.

Oh—and one more tip: always ask to see the reverse side of a document or map. You never know what you’ll find. Some of my favorite discoveries turned up on the back of materials, and thanks to Diane’s generosity in scanning them, they’ll now become an important part of my research. Sometimes it’s what we can’t see at first that is precisely what we need to see.

Further Resources:

• Philip Lee Phillips Society Fellowship

“From the literary maps comes an extra stimulus which lends a sense of reality to the fictional portrayal of place and dimension, distance, and time. This seeming closeness to reality is felt by the reader as he visualizes a narrative with the aid of a map; for the reader the maps hold a power beyond mere abstract symbolism. The imaginative power of the author can better be illustrated if the flame of his experience is reflected by the background of graphic concepts.”

In 2019, the Library received a donation of 10 beautiful literary map paintings, commissioned by the Harris-Seybold Company for their “Maps of Books” promotional calendars. While the prints created of these works are found in libraries around the world, these original paintings have a unique vibrancy and vividness that cannot be translated to a print copy.

The Harris Automatic Press Company of Ohio designed and built the first commercially successful sheetfed offset lithographic printing press in 1906. Throughout the 20th century the Harris-Seybold Company, renamed Harris Intertype Corporation in 1957, manufactured thousands of lithographic printing presses and became the leaders in offset lithography technology.

The calendars were distributed in the middle of the year, the first one published in 1940. The calendar themes varied over the years but in 1953, the company started a new theme of “Maps on Books” which ran for 12 years until they stopped producing the calendars in 1965. The first calendar featured the map below, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, drawn by illustrator Everett Henry.

Everett Henry was a well known New York commercial artist, particularly known for his mural paintings which he produced for club cars of the Pennsylvania Railroad and for the buildings at the New York’s World Fair in 1939. In 1953, Henry was commissioned by the Harris-Seybold company to create literary paintings for their calendars which he did for the next nine years. His mural experience is evident in his literary maps, painting a story line depicting the best known episodes from a particular book. The maps feature lively color illustrations of romantic and adventure novels: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1953), Treasure Island (1954), The Adventures of Robin Hood and His Merry Men (1955), Moby Dick (1956), A Tale of Two Cities (1957), Ivanhoe (1958), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1959), The Virginian (1960), and The Red Badge of Courage (1961).

Henry’s paintings are vivid and filled with color. I find this especially true of his painting Moby Dick where, when I opened the cover, I was particularly struck by the bright colors and depth of the painting. The text printed on the calendar says:

“Artist Everett Henry captures for us, in this picture-map, the defiance of Captain Ahab’s shout, the relentlessness of the Pequod’s pursuit. We see the stark outline of an American classic. We hear the call of Moby Dick, still echoing today for anyone who yearns to feel the magic and terror, the stress and calm of the sea and its ships.”

Another visually arresting map is that of Robin Hood and His Merry Men with its striking shades of green. Of this painting, the in-house Harris-Seybold publication states,

“A colorful picture-map of “The Adventures of Robin Hood and His Merry Men” is the third illustration in the new series of Harris-Seybold Company’s midyear calendar…In less than two years the fascinating “Map-of-a-Book” calendar subjects, published for the first time by Harris-Seybold, have become famous in the graphics arts industry. The painting for Robin Hood, depicting tales of Sherwood Forest, bids to enlarge this fame as it recreated a land of legend in colorful detail. Through the eyes of Everett Henry, distinguished illustrator and cartographer, who paints original canvasses on special assignment from Harris-Seybold, we can see again the English shires where Sherwood Forest grew, and glimpse some of the adventures of Robin Hood and his band.”

Due to Everett Henry’s death in 1961, the last three paintings of the series were created by two other artists, Paul Riba and Ken Riley. Paul Riba drew Call of the Wild in 1962 and Ken Riley finished the series with Last of the Mohicans (1963) and Robinson Crusoe (1965). The books featured in these maps were those popular with the “red-blooded boys,” as the Ivanhoe leaflet states, of the 1920s and 30s, who by the 1950s were running businesses that would presumably be buying printing equipment. Classics traditionally preferred by girls, such as Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, and Jane Eyre, did not appear as map subjects.

The Harris Intertype Corporation stopped publishing the calendars in 1965 but kept the original artwork hanging in their corporate office in Ohio for many years. Two of the original paintings, Ivanhoe and The Virginian went missing in the intervening years. When moving offices several years ago, the successor company to Harris, manroland Goss web systems Americas, generously donated the maps to the Library of Congress to preserve them for all to enjoy.

These maps are an extraordinary asset to the collections in the Geography and Map Division. In the words of Mark Twain’s character, Huckleberry Finn, “There ain’t anything that is so interesting to look at as a place that a book has talked about.”

The 189 footprint outlines can be seen in white as a layer in the map to gauge the amount of coverage for a given time segment.  The footprint layer also provides attribute information via the pop-up window corresponding to the site that is clicked on the map.  This information includes for each map sheet the title, sheet number, edition, publication date, copy, and file name as well as links to the catalog record, online digital set, and download of each digital map sheet with collar.  The image below shows an example of the Khartoum 55 B 1916 Copy 1 sheet selected with its corresponding pop-up information.

By clicking the link in the download field of the pop-up, you are able to download a full TIFF format image of the selected map with the collar included.  There is also an option to download sidecar files if you want a georeferenced version of the TIFF images.  The image below shows the downloaded Khartoum 55 B 1916 Copy 1 map sheet that was selected from the app in the example above.

This application is a great way to explore the anthropomorphic, physical, economic and cultural changes that occurred in the Sudan through the time period the map sheets were published.  One example can be found in the Gezira Agricultural Scheme, one of the largest irrigation projects in the world.  It is located in the El Gezira region of Sudan between the White Nile and Blue Nile just southeast of Khartoum and extending from the hub of Wad Medani.  Begun in 1925, the project diverted water from the Sennar Dam on the Blue Nile which was gravity-fed through canals and ditches to approximately 2 million acres of agricultural plots growing crops such as cotton, sorghum, and wheat.  The early published sheets from the Sudan 1:250,000 set before 1925 (1914 and 1923) have no features of the Gezira Agricultural Scheme. Major canals start to show up on the Wad Medani 55 G 1930 sheet with extensions of minor canals and ditches progressively appearing up to the Wad Medani ND 36 G 1965 sheet.  The image below shows a side-by-side comparison of the 1914 and 1965 sheets in the application with the irrigation features represented with blue lines.

The additional image below shows a closer view of the Gezira Agricultural Scheme from the 1965 sheet along with the imagery basemap (changed via the toggle basemap tool) showing the 1965 irrigation features in comparison with the current irrigation features via the swipe tool.

The Gezira Agricultural Scheme was built to bring water to the northern part of the Sudan (today known as the Republic of Sudan) due to its mostly arid desert climate.  However, in contrast to the north, the southern part of the Sudan (currently known as the country of South Sudan) is home to the largest wetlands in Africa known as the Sudd.  The Sudan application again can be used to examine changes in water features but this time with a focus on naturally occurring wetlands.  The image below shows the most current edition of the Lake No 66 I map sheet from 1936 which shows the highly geomorphological nature of this part of the Sudd wetlands.  Earlier editions of the Lake No sheet (1910, 1914, and 1921) show the shifting courses and boundaries of hydrological features such as Lake No and the Agaid and Turor rivers.

Also typical of the Sudan 1:250,000 topographic map set are written descriptions of landscape features that seem to supplement the existing symbology in an idiosyncratic way.  Labels such as “Open grass plain with scattered ant hills“, “Very conspicuous tree“, and “Winter Cattle Camps” on the Lake No 66 I 1936 sheet are indicative of this type of written description.

An example of an economic phenomenon that can be traced through the Sudan application is the practice of slavery.  This baneful practice in Sudan dates back thousands of years.  The 1908-1976 period in which these Sudan maps were published document locations of slavery posts on some of the earlier maps.  The image below shows 2 of the 3 slavery posts on the Rosieres 66 C 1915 sheet indicated near the banks of the Blue Nile.  Although the Anglo Egyptian Sudan government officially banned slavery in 1924, it was difficult to completely eradicate the practice, but at least the slavery posts were removed from the Roseires 66 C maps published in 1932 and 1966.  Currently the physical location of those two slavery posts is underwater due to the completion of the Roseires Dam in 1966 which formed the Roseires Reservoir in the area which can be seen on either basemap in the web mapping application.

The last examples I would like to show demonstrates the rich cultural heritage of Sudan.  Over 200 Nubian pyramids were built in the Sudan between 700 BC and 350 AD to serve as tombs for royalty or wealthy citizens. The Nubians adapted the pyramid form from Egypt, but had a distinctive style characterized by small, steep pyramids with a narrow base. The image below shows the location of a complex of pyramids located at the site of Meroe on the Shendi 45 O 1913 map sheet, labeled with what appears to be a distinctive Wedding Regular text font used for antiquities features.

The Sudanese gubba were also tombs but made of mudbrick in a beehive shape as part of the medieval Muslim architectural style between the 8th and 17th centuries. About 100 of these are scattered throughout northeastern Sudan and are symbolized by a circle topped by a crescent on the maps. The image below shows two gubba labeled “Hali Wad Ali” and “Aiee Talib” which also come from the Shendi 45 O 1913 map sheet.

In conclusion, the Sudan 1:250K Topographic Maps, 1908-1976 application provides a great resource for exploring Sudan. Although relatively small scale, this set of maps contain an abundance of information beyond the examples shown here and the inclusion of multiple editions adds a time dimension for even deeper exploration and comparison.

Maps can be frustrating. Especially when there’s a lot of them. Sometimes I just want one piece of information, but must spend hours searching through map sheets, only to find the information isn’t there. Actually, who am I kidding? Solving the puzzle is of my favorite things about maps.

We here in the Geography & Map Division understand you may not have time to go on months-long map finding quests, so we want to give you the tools to go on a mini quest, using the internet, to get inspired. How do we do that? The answer: Make an application where you can see historic map sheets on a modern map and have the tools to search for just the sheets you want. That’s what I did this summer as the Junior Fellow in the Geography & Map Division for a project entitled “Organizing the Austro-Hungarian Empire: Creation of a Spatial Search Application.” 

I looked at every sheet of the Spezialkarte der ö̈sterreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie (known around the Division as “the Austro-Hungarian map set”), wrote down all the dates from every sheet, and then connected those dates to an online dataset that shows the geographic area each sheet depicts. After that, I made a web mapping application where you can search and filter by the dates on each sheet.

The Austro-Hungarian map set is one of the Geography & Map Division’s largest map sets, with a staggering 5,008 sheets spanning from 1875 to 1957, depicting the geographic area historically known as Austria-Hungary. The set name may be slightly misleading – a little over half the set was made during the existence of Austria-Hungary, and the rest of the sheets were made after. Even though many of the sheets are from after the dissolution of the empire, the map sheets are one set for two reasons: First, they share the same index (a map encompassing the entire set area, with grid squares to represent where each sheet is located) and second, all the maps were made by the same organization in Vienna (their name just changed). The set is useful because it documents over 75 years of a place that went through drastic geopolitical shifts. However, the size of the map set makes it difficult to navigate. That’s where our spatial search application comes in.

Thanks to the heroes that are reference librarians (always remember, they’re the ones who help those of us ‘behind the scenes’ know which tools would be most useful for your research), we decided that the best way to search and filter would be by date.

At first my job was easy: look at each sheet and write down the most recent date that wasn’t an accession stamp (a marker for when the library or other federal agency received the map). As I looked through the sheets, I started to notice multiple dates in multiple places on each map. I started to write the dates down, and eventually I pitched an idea to my mentor: add additional date categories to help users contextualize the sheet information across time and space. She said yes!

Figuring out the meaning of the MANY dates and their categories was challenging, but with a little elbow grease and a LOT of research, I figured it out.  

Now that we’ve gone over the method, let’s discuss what you’ve all been waiting for — *drumroll please*… the Austro-Hungarian Map Set Navigator, 1875-1957.

There are five main features of the application 

Glossary: By clicking on the book icon, you can learn more about each of the date categories. Some of the dates are easy to define (like print date), but some can be a bit harder to figure out. The glossary tells you how I defined those trickier dates.  

Search: By clicking the magnifying glass, you can search by present day location or by sheet number.   

Layers: the layers function allows you to see the legend for the map’s sheets and a table of all the different sheets (it looks like a spreadsheet). You may have noticed an image underneath the map sheet layer. That’s the index sheet for the map set from 1916 (remember how I talked about the index earlier?). 

Time slider: You can easily filter for the dates you are looking for by dragging the handles to your chosen time range. Below, I dragged the time slider to show 1880-1890. Now the application is only showing sheets spanning from 1880-1890. To see different sheets throughout time, just click the play button, and it will show the dates in 10-year intervals. 

Filter: The filter feature offers a more precise method of searching for sheets than the time slider. Some of the filters aren’t for dates – you can click the “Contains Notes” filter to see which sheets have writing on them or interesting features. Using the sheet date filter works exactly like the time slider: just type the date range into the field instead of dragging the slider. Other filters allow you to filter by different date categories. Just keep in mind that if you use the advanced date filters, only sheets that have that type of date can be searched. Not all sheets have all types of dates!

Clicking on any index square within the application will bring up a pop-up window that lets you preview the sheet. Most index squares have multiple sheets (in the example below, 14 sheets are available). Use the arrows in the top-left of the pop-up window to browse through all of the available sheets for that geographic area.

Now, go forth! Explore the application! Play the time animation, read the glossary, and filter at your leisure. Conquer the Austro-Hungarian Empire and don’t forget to have fun!

On the second-floor mezzanine of the iconic Thomas Jefferson Building you will find the rectangular gallery that holds the exhibit. Just past the double doors you will first encounter a panel that provides an overview of the exhibit. Behind the panel, themed videos are projected on the walls of the room (with related audio) of the Library collections to immerse you in the exhibit. The display is contained in four double-sided, rectangular exhibit cases that run parallel down the long side of the room. A table in the center of the room offers touch to feel characteristics of some collection formats and listen to learn about significance of the artifacts as they relate to the Declaration of Independence. The exhibit is structured into eight distinct themes—Revolutionary Mind; Drafting the Declaration; Rule by the People; A New Birth of Freedom; Created Equal; Life, Liberty; Pursuit of Happiness; and Consent of the Governed. Now, I will highlight the four themes that include objects from the Geography and Map Division.

Let’s start with the theme of the Revolutionary Mind, which deals with the ideas like “natural rights” and “republicanism” that led Americans to “defy and overthrow political tyranny” in the Declaration of Independence. The “World of the Revolutionaries“—those who stoked ideas of revolution—are reflected in a terrestrial globe made in 1775 by Rigobert Bonne (1727–94). Bonne was a French cartographer, etcher, and engraver, known for his 1762 Atlas moderne and the eponymous Bonne Projection—an alternative to traditional flat projection that looked similar to a heart. This globe of the earth measures 31 centimeters in diameter and is made of hand-colored paper gores over papier-mâché and plaster. The globe is mounted in a wooden stand with four decorative arms supporting a wooden zodiacal circle and a meridian ring crowned by a clockface with needle.

Next up is Drafting the Declaration, “the deliberate expression of a people entering into nationhood.” The exhibit includes Plan of Philadelphia showing the State House (present-day Independence Hall) where the Second Continental Congress met and adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The map below shows the first illustration in any format of the State House, which was originally planned for the provincial government business of Pennsylvania.

Then on to the theme of Rule by the People, which interacts with the challenges Americans faced during the political transformation to a government that represents the people. A New Capital for a New Government is a map by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey (1887) that is based on Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s Plan of the City Intended for the Permanent Seat of the Government of the United States (1791). In the 18th century the map making and planning of the capital itself was not without its own complications.

President George Washington (1732–39) selected the location of the new capital between the Potomac River and Eastern Branch (present-day Anacostia River). He then appointed Andrew Ellicott (1754–1820), astronomer and surveyor from Bucks County, Pennsylvania and his assistant, Benjamin Banneker (1731–1806) as official surveyors and Pierre L’Enfant (1754–1825), a French architect who served in the Continental Army as an engineer during the Revolutionary War, as the city planner. However, before the plan was finished L’Enfant was relieved of his duties and Ellicott and Banneker would be put in charge of completing the plan.

Finally, the last artifact in the exhibit from the map collections represents Americans’ Religious Diversity. It appears under the theme of Life, Liberty, which explores the evolution of how Americans’ view life and liberty. The map on display shows the variety of houses of worship in Revolution-era Newport. In the 18th century, Rhode Island was a safe place for people with a range of religious beliefs to live, including Baptist, Quaker, Huguenot (French Protestant), and Jewish people.

Come explore the cartographic collections in the Geography and Map Division or visit the Library exhibit to discover for yourself how Americans’ engaged with the Declaration of Independence.

A Map Begets a Question

For America’s bicentennial, the Library of Congress commissioned the publication Maps and Charts of North America and the West Indies, 1750-1789: a Guide to the Collections in the Library of Congress. As I was exploring this inventory, I was reminded that maps are not always purely functional; they often convey important historical context. One tactical map depicting the Siege of Boston proved especially intriguing. Beyond showing the positions of British and American forces during the early stages of the Revolution, its symbolic details illustrate the complexity of Revolutionary loyalties and led me on a quest to investigate my own family’s Revolutionary experience.

In the upper right of the Boston map above, an allegorical cartouche depicts a British soldier attempting to replace a pine tree banner on a liberty pole cap—symbols of independence and resistance—with a banner bearing the British lion. An American revolutionary raises a dagger to defend the banner while an Indigenous person observes the struggle from the periphery. Behind the American, a bundle of fasces represents strength through unity among the colonies. Inscribed on a shield behind the Indigenous observer is a line from Horace’s seventh Epode: “Quo scelesti ruitis?”—Where are you wicked men hastening to?—in which Horace scolds his fellow Romans for engaging in civil war.

Intrigued by this rich symbolism, I began to wonder: what side was my family on? Naturally, I turned to the records. I searched the American Loyalist claims and located one for Gideon Squire (o.v. Squier, Squiers, Squires), my seventh great granduncle. He noted joining the British troops at Skenesborough while living at Granville, New York, and “after being taken prisoner was Commuted to Prison being in a low State of health and and sufferd in Gaol att Benington for the Space of one month…” The locations mentioned in the claim place Squire within the landscape of the Saratoga Campaign, General John Burgoyne’s 1777 attempt to isolate New England by seizing control of the Hudson River Valley. Family lore had only ever mentioned Patriot participants in the Revolution, so discovering a Loyalist in the family came as a surprise. I wanted to understand how he had arrived at the decision to support the British.

Tracing Gideon Squire’s Loyalist Journey

I consulted another bibliography, British Maps of the American Revolution by Peter J. Guthorn and located an entry for the maps included with the publication A State of the Expedition from Canada, as laid before the House of Commons (1780), written by Burgoyne to justify the failure of his expedition. One map in particular shows the campaign in its entirety, illustrating how global politics reached Squire’s rural community.

While Squire’s home in Granville, New York, is not on the map, it shows the towns of Poultney and Pawlet, Vermont, just across the border to the north and south. The British advance—marked in red—went right through his neighborhood, showing how a global conflict reached rural North America.

Another map in Burgoyne’s report, seen below, depicts the Battle of Bennington where Burgoyne wrote that “General Starks [Stark] was ‘luckily’ joined by Colonel Warner with a considerable body of men.” Seth Warner was second-in-command of the famous Vermont rebel militia known as the “Green Mountain Boys”—and Squire’s cousin. If their paths converged around Bennington, Warner may have been surprised to find his cousin fighting for the British since Squire began the war as a lieutenant in the Charlotte County (New York) militia.

The Geography of Loyalty

To better understand the geography of Squire’s world, I located a 1776 map of the region and immediately noticed a peculiar collection of parcels shaped like a sheet of postage stamps. Further research shows that the Hudson River Valley around the New York – New Hampshire border was embroiled in a regional upheaval over property rights to these parcels—also known the New Hampshire Grants or the Benning Wentworth Grants for the governor who issued them—for more than a decade when the Revolution arrived. The area would later become Vermont.

The Green Mountain Boys were an extralegal militia formed to protect land rights in the New Hampshire Grants, which were contested based on New York’s belief that its eastern border extended to the Connecticut River while New Hampshire claimed the boundary 20 miles east of the Hudson River. The extended Squire family had moved from Connecticut to the township of Arlington, chartered under the New Hampshire grants. When the British Crown ruled in favor of New York’s jurisdiction (1764), grantees were evicted or required to purchase New York patents for lands they already occupied. Neither colonial government had acquired these lands through treaties or agreements with their Indigenous inhabitants. The Continental Congress also acknowledged New York’s jurisdiction.

Counties, like Charlotte County New York, on the border of the grants, were surveyed to include part of the New Hampshire grants, including those where Squire’s family lived. Those living in the western grants were especially vulnerable. They faced pressure from New York over landownership and confronted Burgoyne’s campaign from the north with little support from those in the Eastern grants or Continental Congress. On a personal level, landowners like Squire were torn between local conflict, family loyalty, and the British campaign of fear and destruction—often promising protection for support and destruction for resistance. Considering these factors, Squire’s decision appears to have been more pragmatic than idealistic.

Maps are often more than topographical tools; they reveal how geography shapes people’s lives. The Boston map’s cartouche presents the Revolution as a struggle between Patriots and Loyalists, yet using maps from the Library of Congress to explore Gideon Squire’s experience reveals a more complicated reality. By connecting geography to the lived experience of competing colonial ambitions, family relationships, property rights, and survival, these maps tell the story of how ordinary colonists navigated local concerns and personal circumstances against the broader forces of imperial conflict and geopolitics.