Mapping Texas: From Frontier to the Lone Star State
A Collaborative Exhibit between the Texas General Land Office and the Witte Museum, April 29-September 4, 2016
A new exhibit at the Witte Museum in San Antonio covering nearly three hundred years of Texas cartography opens April 29, 2016, in the Russell Hill Rogers Gallery of the Helen C. and Robert J. Kleberg South Texas Heritage Center.
Over forty rare maps from the collections of the Texas General Land Office, the Witte Museum, and the private collection of Frank and Carol Holcomb, of Houston, will be exhibited to the public. Many of these maps are on display for the first time. The fragile nature of the items on display makes this a once-in-a-generation exhibit to visit. This curated collection, dating from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century, traces the changing physical and political boundaries of Texas. Mapping Texas also includes artifacts and original documents relating to the creation of the select maps.
Mapping Texas: From Frontier to the Lone Star State focuses on important phases in this region’s cartographic history, including European discovery, western expansion of the United States, the settlement of the frontier through empresario contracts with the Mexican State of Coahuila y Texas, the limits of the Republic of Texas, and the new boundaries created within the State of Texas. The exhibit will also show the changing boundaries of San Antonio and Bexar County.
European cartographers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries imagined the Americas as a vast territory to be claimed and colonized despite the existence of indigenous communities. Their imagination led to the production of early maps of the region that included mythical place names, depictions of indigenous peoples, and approximate representations of the coastal boundaries of North America. As colonization expanded, contested claims between European powers fueled further exploration and the rendering of more accurate maps that depict landscapes we recognize today.
In the first decade of the nineteenth century, the Prussian geographer and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) published a map to accompany his essay on his scientific expedition through New Spain (Mexico). He composed the 1811 “Carte Générale du Royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne” from archives in New Spain and Washington, DC. This work formed the basis for subsequent mappings of the southwest for many years. Although there is relatively little information on this document regarding Texas specifically, Humboldt’s map shows the Province of Texas’s contested borders extending beyond the Sabine River, which, he admitted, had not been accepted by the U. S. Congress. The question of the confines of Texas remained unsettled for nearly a decade after this map’s publication.
The mapping of the United States’ western expansion is an important part of Mapping Texas: From Frontier to the Lone Star State. After its independence from Great Britain, the United States sought to spread its ideals of liberty “from sea to shining sea.” No mapmaker illustrated this more than John Melish (1771 -1822), whose 1816 “Map of the United States” showed the U.S. territory extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Melish’s map, issued in 24 separate editions between 1816 and 1823, played an integral part in the delineation of the boundaries between Spanish and American territories in the 1819 Transcontinental Treaty (also known as the Adams-Onís Treaty).
Mexico’s 1821 independence from Spain opened the door for further settlement of its northern frontier, leading to a proliferation of new maps of the territory. Stephen F. Austin, often referred to as the “Father of Modern Texas” for his contributions to the establishment of the empresario system and Anglo immigration to Texas, has been given a special space in this exhibit. Although most Texans are familiar with his work as an empresario (the person responsible for bringing new settlers into the Mexican granted lands), Stephen F. Austin deserves recognition for his work as one of Texas’s first mapmakers. For the first time ever, three of Austin’s most important maps are featured together representing his contributions to the cartographic history of Texas. The earliest of these is an 1825 edition of his 1822 map, which accompanied the petition for the confirmation of his empresario contract with the Mexican authorities. Prominently featured in this exhibit is Austin’s 1837 “Connected Map of Austin’s Colony, 1833–1837,” which depicts the original land grants issued within Austin’s Colony. This map became the model for subsequent land ownership maps housed at the Texas General Land Office. The third of Austin’s maps displayed is the 1840 edition of his 1830 Map of Texas.
Texas’s 1836 independence from Mexico introduced not only a new form of government to the region, but also contested territorial claims. The Republic of Texas redrew its southern border at the Rio Grande River, following its course due west and then north to its source in present-day Colorado, giving Texas its largest territorial extent. To the east, Texas and the United States used previously established treaties (primarily the Adams-Onís Treaty) to set their borders. This led to a new series of surveys being made between 1838 and 1841. Mapping Texas: From Frontier to the Lone Star State exhibits, for the very first time, the manuscript drafts of the surveys of the Texas-U.S. Joint Boundary Commission. Three different sheets, over fourteen feet wide, trace the Sabine River from its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico to Logan’s Ferry in the north, near present-day Logansport, LA. A second set of maps follows the survey in a straight line due north from west of Logan’s Ferry on the Sabine to the Red River. The boundaries established by these surveys were recognized when Texas entered the Union in 1845.
Mapping Texas: From Frontier to the Lone Star State includes maps of Bexar County and the city of San Antonio, bringing the cartographic history of Texas into the late nineteenth century. Please join us in this celebration of the more than 300 years of mapping Texas and experience this once-in-a-generation opportunity to enjoy many of the rare maps curated from three prominent Texas map collections.
