Thursday, February 25, 2010

Times and map makers were unkind to single women

By placement of an abbreviation, the maker of this 1870 map of Gardner, Mass. seems to have editorialized either on the financial status or morals of one Miss Wilder.
The map (thumbnail links to a full-size (3.2MB file):

On the north side of town, we see this:

Posted by Karl Hakkarainen at 3:36 AM
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1 comment:

Adam Hakkarainen said...

Upon reading the 1874 account of the Williamsburg Flood, I tried to imaging how different the narrative might have been had it been written today. When they summarized the damage inflicted upon property, they used people's names more often than not. For example, and I'll paraphrase here (I don't have the publication with me), "So and so's house, cattle barn, corn crib were destroyed." I think today it would have been "A one family house on West Street and a number of outbuildings were destroyed." I find it particularly interesting to note on your map with "Poor Ho" (Is that short for 'Poor House'?) that they list individual residences and the owners' names. I wonder if they did that more because maps were commissioned by towns, not for the use of hikers and the military, but for assessing property values and for public safety. Or because the history then was much shorter: Gardner was probably not around for long before your map was drawn. So a string of ownership for a particular piece of property was uncommon, except for older cities like Boston.

4:27 PM

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