Archival Collections

“A New World of Pleasure”: The 105th Anniversary of the Panama Canal

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By Lauren Maddox

On August 15, 1914 the United States officially opened the Panama Canal. It took thirty-three years for the construction to come to fruition; France began building the Canal in 1881, but were unable to carry the project forward. Workers were dying and the engineers hit roadblock after roadblock. The United States took over the project in 1904.

European colonists have had ideas about the Panama Canal since 1513; Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and wondered about a water-passage shortcut for ships crossing the Atlantic and Pacific. But imagination ran past ability, and the technology needed for such an undertaking would not be developed until the 19th century. France began the initial efforts. The project was led by canal engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps. But amid the disease and trouble financing the project, they were only able to complete half of the canal. As soon as the project was abandoned, the US expressed interest in the picking it up again, but US involvement with the Panama Canal was unpopular at home. French failure to complete the project was disheartening and the Colombian government was unenthused about the idea of an American canal to say the least.

For the US to be granted the rights to continue work on the canal, some political finagling was required. Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla, a businessman and engineer who had financed the original attempt, stood to lose his investment if the canal was left unfinished. He began lobbying US lawmakers and encouraging Panamanian independence movements which would prevent Colombian interference with US building efforts. It didn’t hurt that the US maintained an active military presence during the building to discourage conflict. American engineers also moved away from the original plans for a sea-level canal and began work on a lock-controlled canal which would would help them avoid the building problems the French had. Advancements in healthcare for workers and a new focus on mosquito control also helped save workers from catching the diseases that had killed so many during French construction.

The AGSL has an extensive collection of materials on the Panama Canal. Theodore Roosevelt, a longtime friend and council member of the AGS until his presidency forced him to resign, was a great proponent of the canal. And the one of AGS’s own directors, Isaiah Bowman, made several trips to South America during his doctoral work and beyond, and championed efforts to create a map of “Hispanic America” as part of the international map of the world. Bowman, a controversial figure who was a known antisemite, contributed a large portion of the AGSL’s records on the Panama Canal. His particular interest in South America made the way for revolutionary cartographic work in the area, and the continued AGS sponsored expeditions are named for him.

Work on the lock-controlled canal began in 1904, when the US was officially granted the rights to build by the newly-independent Panamanians. The French ship Alexandre la Valley made the first test-crossing of the canal in January 1914. Construction began winding down; pop-up towns were demolished, workers were laid off, and more permanent governance of the canal was established. A grand opening celebration was planned– but when World War I broke out, the festivities were downsized to something more modest. On August 15, 1914 the SS Ancon made the first official crossing, marking the grand opening of the Panama Canal. No international officials attended the opening, so George Washington Goethals, engineer and first governor of the Canal Zone, tracked the ships progress by train. The AGSL has several maps of the Panama Canal before and after its opening. Since its first ship-crossing, the Panama Canal has only grown; Panama took ownership of the canal in 1977, new construction began in 2007, and annual traffic has risen to nearly a million crossings.

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To the Lighthouse: Representations of Lighthouses on Maps

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By Lauren Maddox

Lighthouses have been guiding us home over the rough sea from our earliest maritime beginnings– but our understanding of lighthouses and how we represent them on maps and nautical charts has changed drastically since these beginnings. While references to early lighthouses exist, including Homer’s claim that Palamedes devised a system of lit beacons to guide sailors, the first “regularly maintained” lighthouse in antiquity was on Cape Incihisari. J. Saxby Wryde, however, claims in his British Lighthouses: Their History and Romance that the most celebrated lighthouses in antiquity were built 400 years after this. The Colossus at Rhodes was erected in 278 B.C. and destroyed by an earthquake in 224; the remains were sold as brass and carted away on camels by a merchant. In 270 B.C., the famous Lighthouse of Alexandria was constructed in honor of Ptolemy Philadelphus on a small island in the Bay of Alexandria.

  • Click the link for details about the 1913 Edition of British Lighthouses
  • Illustration of the Lighthouse of Alexandria

The function of lighthouses has also evolved over the years; in antiquity, lighthouses were only expected to indicate the location of ports. Lighthouses as we understand them today act as warnings for boats approaching reefs and rocky shores. This understanding of lighthouses as way markers is reflected on ancient maps. The Lighthouse of Alexandria is depicted pictorially in Braun and Hogenberg’s 16th century atlas Civitates Orbis Terrarum–the lighthouse is given the same attention as the city’s obelisk or its ruins; its existence is simply recorded and labeled with a single word: pharus for lighthouse. The lighthouse has obviously done its job, though; ships are shown moving towards the lighthouse and the port it is indicating. One ship is even flying St. George’s Cross, the British flag used by crusaders that was later adopted as the national flag in Medieval England.

The Lighthouse of Alexandria was also doomed to be destroyed by earthquakes, but the bricks were used to construct the Citadel of Quaitbey. UWM professor Caroline Seymour-Jorn donated her photo collections to the AGSL , including several photos from 1996 visit to Egypt of the citadel.

The Roman Empire adopted the Greek pharos and began building them across Italy and the Empire, including the Tower of Hercules in A Coruña, Spain and Dover. The lighthouse in A Coruña is still functional, but many Roman lighthouses were abandoned in the Middle Ages and replaced. As travel and trade by sea became more and more prevalent, the need for lighthouses grew.

Most lighthouses constructed during this time are no longer operational, but the Hook lighthouse in Ireland continues to be used. The building has been in operation for over 800 years and is now managed by the Commissioners of Irish Lights. Lighthouses in England were privately owned and operated during the Middle Ages and beyond. Because there was no regulation or standard policy, lighthouse keepers began to abuse their posts, stealing ship cargo and demanding payment from sailors. This problem became so pervasive that the Lighthouse Act of 1836 was passed in the hopes of making coasts safer for ships coming to port.

In the 18th century, lighthouse construction advanced to match the needs of a growing transatlantic trade. Bigger, better lighthouses were being built and were now being used as more than way markers; they could warn incoming ships and regulate boat traffic. In 1716, the first American lighthouse was built on the Boston Harbor; many more began to spring up in the subsequent years, and in 1851 Congress passed an act to facilitate the creation of the US Lighthouse Board, which would eventually be dissolved to make room for the Lighthouse Service. The AGSL has many of the Service’s records, including records of their history, finances, regulations, and buoyage and lighthouse systems.

With lighthouses increased utility and presence on coastlines, their representation on maps began to shift. Instead of being just illustrations or seamarks, lighthouses began to take on a new navigational importance. Diagrams of lighthouses, recordings of the range of their lights, and more exact buoy locations became a common part of maps.

Now lighthouses have a romantic air as well as a practical use; writers and artists work to capture the lighthouse. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf comes to mind. And here, in Milwaukee, where the AGSL lives, we have our share of lighthouses on our Great Lake Michigan.

This entry was posted in Archival Collections, Atlases, Lauren Maddox, Lauren's blog, Map Collection, Nautical charts, Photo Collection and tagged , , , .

Mornings in Mexico: A Short History of Travel Literature

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By Lauren Maddox

In 1919, still recovering from a nearly fatal bout of influenza, D.H. Lawrence fled England. He had been staying in Derbyshire with his wife Freida, finishing “The Wintry Peacock” and hiding from authorities. The couple was destitute; his most famous novel The Rainbow had been banned on obscenity charges and the government was using the Defence of the Realm Act to openly, and often violently, harass Lawrence for his anti-militarism and Freida’s German heritage. Sick, and barred from publishing, Lawrence resolved to undertake his “savage pilgrimage.” His self-exile from England was funded by an ancient, and very British, literary tradition: travel literature.

  • Photo of Lawrence by Lady Ottoline Morrell 29 November 1915

Despite these dire beginnings, Lawrence produced several gems during his travels: Twilight in Italy, Sea and Sardinia, Etruscan Places, and in 1927 Mornings in Mexico. The AGSL has a 1927 edition of Mornings in Mexico as well as a collection of travel writings from across time time and space, including dozens of travel books exploring Mexico and Latin America.

But the tradition of travel literature has existed as long as we have been traveling. Petrarch, climbing Mount Ventoux in 1336, accused his traveling companions of being frigida incuriositas–men with cold curiosity. The climb became a metaphor for Petrarch’s life, and he used his physical and visual experience of the landscape as a way to meditate on his own moral climb. UWM professor emeritus H. James Shey translated Petrarch’s Itinerarium, which outlines Petrarch’s proposed route for Giovanni Mandelli’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1358. The Itinerarium focused primarily on the geography and path Mandelli would travel, but also included references to local history and Petrarch’s own spiritual experience as a pilgrim. The AGSL has a signed copy of Shey’s translation (which includes his own commentary on the Itinerarium) in the collection.

Travel literature was a well-loved genre before tourism took hold as a social standard; travel literature became a way for people to explore new places that they would never travel to themselves. Travel writing has taken many different forms over the years– in the 2nd century, Pausanias wrote his Description of Greece as Greece was being incorporated into the Roman Empire. The books attempt to capture the glories of Greek culture even as it began to shift into obsolescence by dedicating entire books to describing specific cities and regions, their geography, architecture, and religion. This multi-volume 1898 edition was translated by J.G. Frazer— the AGS purchased it as first edition from Macmillan & Co. the year it was published.

Travel writing continued to develop– travel diaries became popular during the Song Dynasty in China and Medieval Arabic literature. In the West, the genre became increasingly popular as exploration became a cultural priority; The Travels of Marco Polo transported readers to a great unknown East, Christopher Columbus’s journals became fascinating narratives of discovery, and maritime travelogues expanded the imaginations of the general population. But the tradition, especially in Europe, became steeped in colonialism.

In Mary Louise Pratt’s Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, she asks “how travel books written by Europeans about non-European parts of the world created the imperial order for Europeans “at home” and gave them their place in it.” Europe’s economic and political growth in the 18th century opened the door to imperialist ideals, and in time the colonization and exploitation of countries by Europe. Travel literature written by European authors became a way for Europeans at home to imagine their place in the Empire and imbued them with a sense of “ownership, entitlement and familiarity” that allowed them to idealize European expansion as a moral quest to spread civilization to “uncivilized” hinterlands beyond their own borders. Travel writers became the eyes through which Europeans viewed the rest of the world, complicating the role of travel writing in literature and the colonial to post-colonial world. The act of viewing and recording became a way for colonizing countries to express ownership over the “domestic subjects” being viewed and recorded.

So, when Lawrence left England and wrote about his travels to feed himself during his “savage pilgrimage” and long exile, he joined a long tradition of Europeans who, voyeuristically, observed and recorded the countries beyond their own borders as a way to stake their claim. Even Lawrence, rejected by his England and forced to wander, couldn’t separate himself from a long tradition of literary Imperialism. But travel writing continues to thrive: travel guides, tourism blogs, journals and memoirs connect people to places they might be going or have never been. We still use travel literature as a way to reflect on our own lives, like Petrarch, to see beyond ourselves, and experience new places. Travel literature has a long, and sometimes detrimental, history– but, Lawrence assures us, “still, it is morning, and it is Mexico. The sun shines.”

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The Island of California

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By Lauren Maddox

  • Illustration from La sergas de Esplandián

“Know that, on the right hand of the Indies, there is an island called California, very near to the Terrestrial Paradise;” this description, found in Chapter 157 of Las sergas de Esplandián, names a California at least sixteen years before Cortez spotted the coast of the land he would name California. The Spanish romance, which was a sequel to Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo’s better-known and better-received Amadis de Gaula, was largely forgotten despite being the first mention of a place named California. Esplandián was considered an inferior sequel and faded into insignificance; it’s greatest claim to fame is its brief appearance in Don Quixote’s library in Cervantes’s comical romance. And even that reference was unflattering. The curate chose to burn Esplandián instead of Amadis de Gaula because, he said, we should not “spare the son for the virtues of the father.”

So, Las sergas de Esplandián was a failed romance that was quickly forgotten. But, as the first recorded use of California, it stands to reason that this forgettable Spanish romance could have inspired Cortez when he encountered the lowest tip of the Baja California Peninsula, 775 miles from where the peninsula joins the mainland. As far as Coretz could tell from his ship, he had found an island on the right hand of the Indies, very near to the Terrestrial Paradise.

The misconception that California was an island would persist throughout the 16th century, and resurface with new, incorrect maps released in the 17th and 18th century. In 1539, Cortez’s navigator Francisco de Ullou ventured northward into California and discovered it was a peninsula, debunking the theory that California was an island just six years after the first sighting of the peninsula. Somehow, the legend persisted despite fairly correct representations of the peninsula being published as early as 1569.

  • America in the Mercator Map

Many cartographers incorporated Ullou’s discovery of the peninsula into their maps, including this 1569 world map by Gerard Mercator. If you look closely at America, you can see the Baja California Peninsula clearly and correctly attached to the mainland. This representation wouldn’t stick–the Baja California Peninsula would be confused for an island again after Juan de Fuca’s voyage at the turn of the century. In 1592, de Fuca claimed to have found a strait he thought could be the Northwest Passage with a large island at its mouth. Only one account of this discovery survived, and the location of de Fuca’s strait was confused with California, reviving the representation of California as an Island.

An overland expedition in 1602-1604 should have disproved de Fuca’s claim to have found a Northwest Passage, or at least cleared up any confusion about whether the Baja California Peninsula was the island he had claimed to see at the mouth of the strait. Despite Juan de Onate’s reports, the northern terminus of the Gulf of California was left vague on maps by the Spanish so that Cortez’s claim to the territory in 1533 could invalidate Drake’s later claim in 1579. Several maps released after Mercator’s map and de Onate’s reports show the peninsula detached from the mainland. One of the first atlas maps to depict California as an island was English mapmaker and historian John Speed’s America with those Known Parts in that Unknowne World both People and Manner of Building from 1626 or 27. This representation of America, seen again his A new and accurat map of the world reproduced by Randy McNally in 1966, also includes a fairly accurate mapping of the United States’ East Coast.

William Trevethen’s 1666 Americ descriptio nova depicts the Island of California once again. The Trevethen map also places Sir Francis Drake’s Nova Albion on the island; Nova Albion was actually a part of continental Mexico, and the English claim to Nova Albion was their foothold into claiming further continental territory, which is why the Spanish worked so hard to invalidate that claim. Nova Albion is now Point Reyes, which is just Northwest of the San Francisco area. The region North of the Island of California is marked “terra incognita” with a sea monster lurking in the waters to indicate the unknown and unexplored continent.

A 1677 world map in the AGSL collection by Pierre Duval includes the Island of California at the mouth of an approximately placed strait. This map also includes a vague coast line marked “terre de Iaso” just Northwest of California. The “terre de Iaso” was thought to be a region where Japan connected to North America.

L’America Settentrionale, another 1677 map by Guillaume Sanson, leaves the unexplored areas of North America blank to indicate the unknown, but clearly includes the island of California. Remarkably, the French maps do not include Nova Albion.

At the end of the 16th century, Dutch cartographers Gerard and Leonard Valck produced another map depicting California as an island. The Valck map, like the 1677 Duval map, includes a reference to an area connecting North America and Asia. On the Valck map, it is referred to as the “Terra Esonis.” The Valcks only include the vague coastline of the fabled connection, leaving a blank space– perhaps to leave room for future discoveries. The map includes detailed records of place names and waterways, as well as an illustrated cartouche depicting a pair of “Americans” surrounded by bountiful crops and exotic animals.

This map was produced just eight years before Eusebio Francisco Kino’s series of overland expeditions, which would finally confirm that the Baja California Peninsula was indeed a peninsula. Kino, a Jesuit missionary and cartographer, believed that California was an island until he began to explore deeper into the continent. He initially intended to establish a route between Jesuit missions in Sonoran and Baja California on his expeditions from 1698-1706, but also reported and confirmed the land connection and reestablished the existence of the Baja California Peninsula. The Jesuit order generally accepted his claims, but Europeans were slow to incorporate the peninsula into their own maps because of conflicting reports from Juan Mateo Manje, who joined Kino on several expeditions. Maps created into the 18th century by Europeans still recorded the Island of California’s existence; these two English maps were created just a few years after Kino’s final confirmation of the peninsula’s land connection. The first map, Michael Burgher’s 1714 A New Map of North America, depicts the topography of the area, as well as records of new discoveries, settlements, and claimed and unclaimed territory. The 1717 Map of America by Herman Moll has a similar focus, but includes South America.

The latest map in the AGSL collection depicting California as an island is Matthaeus Seutter’s 1740 map. The hand-colored map is filled with notes and ship routes, as well as two detailed cartouches depicting local peoples and their conversion to Christianity. Seutter’s map also references an Ocean of California surrounding the island and several sketches of aquatic plants.

Montalvo’s lost romance tells stories of a bountiful and fertile island ruled by women adorned in gold and jewels, and the Queen Calafia who fell in love with a Spanish man and forfeited her power, treasures, and land to their king for the chance to marry him. In Las sergas de Esplandián, the island of California is full of potential coveted by conquering Europeans. In many ways, this fiction became reality– California became an island, first by misconception, and then deception as the Spanish maneuvered to maintain their claim on the land and prevent English settlement. And in our collections, we have 200 years of maps recording one of cartography’s longest-lived errors.

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The Love-Life of Dr. Kane

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By Lauren Maddox

Elisha Kent Kane, who appeared in last week’s post about the lost Franklin expedition, lived a life of adventure, and his harrowing escape from the arctic became an iconic expedition in the era of romance and arctic exploration. The accomplished explorer died tragically after his return from the second Grinnell expedition; extreme climate and malnutrition had wreaked havoc on his health. He died just two years later in Havana, Cuba, where he had traveled with his family in the hopes of recovering in the warmer climate. His life of intrigue and excitement didn’t end in the arctic, however; apparently Kane also had a titillating love life. After his death in 1857, a rather scandalous legal dispute began: Margaret Fox, claiming to be Kane’s secret wife, took Kane’s family to court for withholding her inheritance.

Margaret Fox was the middlest of the famous spiritualist Fox sisters. Margaret and her younger sister became famous in 1848 for supposedly communing with the entity that haunted their house in Hydesville, New York. The girls rocketed to fame and began giving demonstrations of their spiritual powers the next year. By 1850, the girls were holding public seances in New York. She and her younger sister continued their journey to spiritualist stardom under the management of their oldest sister Leah; the trio would spend years enjoying success as the centerpieces of seances attended by the well-to-do and famous.

The AGS Library has in its rare collections a first edition copy of Margaret’s tell-all book The Love-Life of Dr. Kane, in which she claims to have secretly married Kane and publishes their personal correspondence to prove it. The book was gifted to the AGSL in 1922 by Edmund Mills from his collection of arctic books. The book, published in 1866, is prefaced and introduced by an unnamed author sympathetic to Margaret’s position in her legal battle with the Kane family and includes a memoir giving a narrative telling of the illicit love-match.

The preface first apologizes for the indecency of publishing love letters and “that which was never intended to meet the public eye,” but goes on to explain that the publication of these private letters, considered too “sacred” by Margaret to publish previously, will save her reputation from the slander she suffered by keeping them private. According to the preface, Kane had left a small inheritance to Margaret as his wife. Their marriage was vehemently denied by the surviving Kane family, and any mention of it in the press was quickly disparaged. Margaret, widowed and without an income, was forced confront the Kane family about the sum left to her by her late husband. After several disputes, several of which involved Elisha Kane’s brother breaking financial agreements, Margaret decided to publish the letters.

  • Fold out copy of letters in Kane’s handwriting tucked between the preface and introduction
  • Kane’s signature

The introduction casts Kane and Margaret as star-crossed lovers kept apart by her occupation as a spiritualist, lack of social position, and his own family’s objections to her reputation. The anonymous author, rather romantically, declares, “How deep and strong that love must have been, to come off victorious from such a conflict!” Then finally, the Memoir chapter begins with the story of how the two met and the letters that they exchanged over the course their courtship. The author describes Kane’s falling in love with Margaret at first sight when he found her in Webb’s Union Hotel bridal parlor the autumn of 1852, preparing for a seance. Their epistolary romance began just days later when Kane slipped Margaret a note asking, “Were you ever in love?” And Margaret replied, “Ask the spirits.”

The romance, as told by the collection of letters, was tumultuous. Kane often denounced Margaret for not being affectionate enough, for continuing her work as a medium, or any number of sundry offenses. And his long absences, during which he sent Margaret to school to be educated until his return, were also a struggle. Though Henry Grinnell often wrote to Margaret to update her about Kane’s progress, the long separations created even more tension between the two. His family rejected Margaret so vehemently that her mother was forced to bar Kane from seeing her for fear of Margaret’s feelings or reputation being injured. Kane continued to seek Margaret out, and even asked her to marry him when he saw her on the street. She refused, but the press caught wind of their so-called engagement and maligned her in the papers. Kane never officially denied their engagement, which helped the gossip continue. Years passed, but in 1856, after Kane’s return from the second Grinnell expedition and the death of one of his close friends, Kane proposed to Margaret again. This time, more officially. But the two would not actually be married until days before he left for Cuba to recover his health– in the Fox’s parlor, Kane declared, in front of Margaret’s mother as their witness, that they were husband and wife. The book cites several legal precedents for this kind of common law marriage, assuring readers that the two were rightfully, if not publicly, married that night. The tone of Kane’s letters changes after this; he begins calling Margaret his beloved wife, but is filled with dread by his continually declining health. He tells Margaret that his greatest fear is dying away from her– which is, of course, what happens. And their marriage, which they had both vowed to keep secret until his return from Cuba, was never officially acknowledged by the Kane family. Margaret converted to Catholicism after Kane’s death and spent her days disavowing her own family’s legacy as mediums.

The introduction of The Love-Life of Dr. Kane claims that a man’s love letters “[reveal his] inner life and soul.” Elisha Kent Kane was a larger-than-life man who gave his life to the pursuit of discovering the unknown. The correspondence collected and published by Margaret Fox show us that Kane was also just a man, with a life and love beyond what we know. The AGSL has several maps by Kane in its collection, reminding us of his many contributions to the American Geographical Society. Below are just some of the items in the AGSL archives: his 1853 circumpolar charts and his surveys of the arctic during the Grinnell expeditions.

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The Lost Franklin Expedition and the Early Years of the AGS

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By Lauren Maddox

On May 19th, 1845, John Franklin, Francis Crozier, and the crews of the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus set out from Greenhithe, England on an expedition intended to explore previously unexplored areas of the Canadian Arctic and to complete the Northwest Passage. Lady Jane Franklin, with no word from Franklin and concerned for the welfare of her husband, began petitioning the British Admiralty to begin searching for the lost expedition as soon as 1847.

The Franklin expedition had been supplied with three years worth of canned goods to supplement the men’s hunting efforts; the British Admiralty assumed that the crew could comfortably survive another year before needing rescue. Unfortunately, the food provisioning contract had been awarded to Stephen Goldner just weeks before the Terror and Erebus set out. In his rush to fulfill the order of 8,000 cans of food, Goldner failed to check the quality of lead soldering on the tins. The food spoiled quickly, leaving the crew without proper provisions on their journey and unable to hunt once the ship was trapped in ice.

Official preparations for the rescue effort began in 1847– the Admiralty chose the three most likely routes that the Franklin expedition might have taken. The ships were likely icebound, so an overland rescue expedition would have to be arranged. Sir John Richardson, a seasoned arctic explorer who had traveled with Franklin on previous expeditions, chose a route along the Mackenzie River and the shores of Victoria Land and Wollaston Land, now Victoria Island and Wollaston Peninsula, which seemed most consistent with Franklin’s original travel plans. John Rae, another arctic explorer well-known for his prowess at safe and efficient overland travel, as well as his rapport with local indigenous peoples, was included in the rescue plans.

After travelling together overland and gathering information from locals, the men wintered in Fort Confidence; using the fort as a base of operations, Rae continued his search around the areas between the Mackenzie and Coppermine Rivers. In 1849, the two men decided that Rae would take the single boat and continue the journey on their intended route with a smaller crew of six men. Richardson returned to Liverpool on November 6, 1849. The above tracings of John Rae’s sketch maps outline his discoveries in 1851. Rae would continue charting the area and searching for signs Franklin’s lost expedition into 1854, but during this time, several other search expeditions were launched, including Henry Grinnell’s.

Click the link to see this portrait of Henry Grinnell between 1844-1860

The Lost Franklin expedition would turn out to be instrumental in the foundation of the American Geographical Society. Henry Grinnell, wealthy merchant and the first elected president of the AGS, retired in 1850 to dedicate his life to philanthropy. Grinnell was a passionate follower of the search for John Franklin; in its collection, the AGSL has several scrapbooks of newspaper clippings following the story collected by Grinnell himself. The scrapbooks contain materials on previous expeditions as well as Grinnell’s own. He was particularly moved by Lady Jane Franklin’s continued appeals to American President Zachary Taylor for help finding her lost husband; when Congress hesitated to provide the aid required for a rescue expedition, Grinnell himself bought and refitted two brigs for arctic travel. He loaned these ships to the US Navy for use in an arctic exploration expedition in the hopes that John Franklin, or some trace of what happened to him, could be found.

  • Click to see this Unidentified Notebook, 1854 found aboard the HMS Resolute after it was abandoned in the search for Franklin in our Digital Collections

The First Grinnell expedition set out in the summer of 1850– the same year preliminary talks about founding an American geographical society began. Geography in the Making: The American Geographical Society 1851-1951 intimates in a single sentence that, though there is no “positive evidence” that Grinnell’s polar interests influence the foundation of the Society, the timing of his arctic expeditions and his election as president seem to suggest it. The expedition, lead by Edwin de Haven and including Elisha Kent Kane, set out in May and would continue their search through ice and bad weather for a year. They met with British search parties, including the first expedition on the HMS Resolute lead by, and joined forces to comb the area thoroughly– during the winter, however, the Advance and the Rescue were separated and icebound. Elisha Kane submitted a chart with a revised survey of the coast of Greenland and the party’s escape route south. This chart also shows the newly christened Grinnell Land, which De Haven named in honor of the expedition’s patron. After being forced to winter over in the ice, it was decided that the two ships should return with what news they had, though it was not very much: all the expedition had discovered about the lost Franklin party was their first camp, abandoned, and three graves on Beechy Island.

Unsatisfied with the results of the first expedition, Grinnell began planning a second search for Franklin. Elisha Kane would lead the expedition north of Beechy Island where Franklin’s first camp was found and into the open summer polar sea. The search plan was approved by the American Geographical Society in New York and financially supported by Grinnell and other philanthropists. Isaac Israel Hayes, another well-known name in the AGSL archives, signed onto the expedition as surgeon. The small crew set out on the Advance on May 30th, 1853 with meager provisions and research instruments. This expedition would shed no new light of the disappearance of Franklin’s expedition, but it would go farther north than any expedition before it, setting a new record, and allow Kane to gather useful geographical, climate, and magnetic observations. The journey was harrowing and the men, trapped for two winters in the ice, running low on supplies, and afflicted with scurvy, would be forced to abandon the Advance in search of rescue. Three men were lost during the expedition and Kane’s health would continue to deteriorate. He died in 1857, just two years after the expedition returned– the same year as his account of the journey was published.

The Grinnell Expeditions were unsuccessful in discovering the fate of the lost Franklin expedition. But during this time, John Rae’s own expedition was still on-going. In 1853, he encountered a group of Inuit who had several artifacts from Franklin’s crew in their possession. This included several pieces of monogrammed silverware, coins, and a pocket watch. Rae purchased these items from the Inuit and began interviewing locals. This was how he eventually discovered the sad fate of the Franklin expedition. While completing his survey of West Boothia, Rae heard about a group of white men who had starved four years earlier in a camp nearby. Rae continued his search until he discovered the final camp of the Franklin expedition. In his letter to the Admiralty, he described the state of the camp and the signs of cannibalism he found there. But, “any tidings, however meager and unexpectedly obtained” were better than none in Rae’s opinion.

The British Admiralty published John Rae’s letter without his knowledge before his return to England in 1854. The public was outraged by his claims; Charles Dickens maligned him in the press and his findings were mostly ignored by Lady Jane Franklin who continued her search into the 1880s. However, later expeditions would only confirm what Rae had discovered, and the British Admiralty officially presumed the entire crew of the Franklin expedition dead. Rae’s crew collected the reward, but his reputation never recovered. Other explorers who had joined in the search for Franklin were knighted, but Rae, for implying that officers of the Royal Navy would stoop to cannibalism, was mostly kept out of the picture.

Rae published several articles in the Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York after his days of Arctic exploration were behind him. He shared his discoveries and practical advice with other explorers in the spirit of the AGS’s organizational purpose: “furthering the understanding of the role of geography in our lives.” After his death in 1893, the AGS published his obituary in their journal, honoring John Rae for his 35 years as a Corresponding Member of the AGS and his important contributions to geography. The Society had this to say about Dr. John Rae: “He wrote with simplicity and force, but he was more concerned to do things worthy of record than to record them. He had the gifts of the born explorer, the habit of exact observation, courage and fertility of resource, untiring energy, activity and strength; and with these a firmness and generosity of character that won the respect and the affection of men.”

And in the AGSL archives, relics of a longstanding friendship between the Society and Rae: a collection of years of correspondence from Rae and his wife Kate to the AGS.

The young beginnings of the American Geographical Society were tied to those first Arctic expeditions to find Franklin, and this legacy of Arctic exploration continued into the 20th century. Luckily, records from these early years remain in the AGSL collection as a reminder of these tragic and exciting origins.

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William E. Merrill Collection Now Available

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By Georgia Brown

Our newest collection holds the papers of the Civil War soldier and Chief Engineer William E. Merrill, who was called “the most innovative and conscientious exponent of mapping during the Civil War.” As the chief topographer of the Army of the Cumberland, his direction of the mapping of Georgia before General Sherman’s late 1864 March to the Sea led to its success.

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William E. Merrill, 1863-1891

William Emery Merrill (1837-1891) was an American soldier and military engineer. He was born at Fort Howard, Wisconsin and was a cadet at West Point beginning in 1854. After graduating first in his class in 1859, he served as an instructor in engineering at West Point until mid-1861 when Merrill was called into active duty in the Civil War. Throughout the war, he spent time in the as Assistant Engineer of Department of the Ohio, Assistant Engineer of the Army of the Potomac during part of the Peninsular Campaign, Superintending Engineer in Kentucky, and then Chief Engineer of the Army of the Cumberland. It was during this time that he supervised the making of the map used by General Sherman during the March to the Sea.

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Following the war, he was raised from the regular army rank of captain to major and by 1883 he had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel. After the war, he spent his time working for the government as an engineer.

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Octagonal block house by prepared under the direction of Col. Wm. E. Merrill, (Image in digital collection)

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One of Merrill’s most notable engineering works was the Chanoine wicket movable dam constructed by him at Davis’s Island, 5.5 miles below Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Davis Island Lock & Chanoine Dam experimental project was the first lock and dam ever constructed on the Ohio River. Its achievements also included the first rolling lock gates, the largest movable dam built in the 19th century, and the widest chamber in world history. In 1889, Merrill represented the United States Engineering Corps at the International Congress of Engineers in Paris. He died in 1891.

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The collection was donated in August of 2018 by Susan E. Williams. She collected items individually over the course of many years. Ms. Williams added several additions of her own research about various items in the collection. To access the finding aid, follow the link here: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-agsl-agslmss0035 

 

 

 

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