"Could I but Mark Out My Own Map of Life": Educated Women Embracing Cartography in the Nineteenth-Century American South

Abstract

In the early 1870s, instead of writing a story, drawing a picture, or composing a poem, William Henry Bailey made a hand-drawn map for his ailing mother. Despite its lack of beauty, its contents betray its unique and poignant intent: the map shows Hillsborough, NC, as it might have appeared in 1839, when Priscilla Bailey was a young wife and mother, surrounded by friends and social activities. Decades later, when Priscilla was living far from all that and recovering from a bad fall, her son created his map, with its narrative explanation of every detail, to comfort his mother by reminding her of happier days and treasured connections. Why did Bailey - a lawyer with no particular expertise in drafting, surveying, or drawing - decide to make a map to stir healing memories in his mother? The answer may lie in an evocative cartographic culture among elite Southern women of her generation. Educated to use maps, engaged daily with graphic information in their sewing and needlework patterns, and frequently separated from kin and other loved ones, these women turned to the cartographic form with familiarity and an expectation of solace. They used geographic vocabularies and metaphors to express their sense of isolation and their need for connection, even as gender norms and physical realities limited their travel and restricted them to their homes. In this article, the practice and implications of this emotional cartographic culture are explored through the examples of two women, Priscilla Bailey and Ellen Mordecai; this exploration is intended to demonstrate the value of a manuscript-based, biographical approach to the history of domestic map use.

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