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Description

Unrecorded final edition of Disturnell's Landmark Treaty Map.

DISTURNELL, J. Mapa de los Estados Unidos de Mejico, California &c. New York, 1862. Lithograph with hand color, 29 x 41. Printed on thick paper and backed with cloth, folded. Manuscript notations.

This is an unrecorded edition of John Disturnell's Map of Mexico, the official map used at the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. The map was normally printed on thin bank note paper, then folded into 8vo. covers. This unique example of the 1862 edition is the only copy we have ever seen printed on thick paper. It was also never inserted into octavo covers, although it was later folded for convenience.

Because of its importance for American history as a treaty map and it's later use in boundary disputes between the United States and Mexico, the Library of Congress was committed to the acquisition of originals or photostats of all editions of the map that could be identified. By 1972, Martin and Ristow had located a total of twenty-three editions dated 1846-1858. No other editions were subsequently identified until the recent discovery of this unique copy of an 1862 edition.

As the last edition and the only one published during the American Civil War, this example of the formerly unknown 1862 edition is an important addition to our knowledge of this landmark map. A number of configurations and details cannot have appeared on the previous 1858 or any other edition.

Utah, for example, is shown with the boundaries that it had for the brief period from February to March 1861, between the creation of Colorado Territory out of a part of eastern Utah and of Nevada Territory from its western part. Texas is shown with the new boundaries created by the Compromise of September 1850. Martin and Ristow make no mention of this new Texas boundary on any of the previously known editions published in 1850 or later. These three late editions, dated 1850 (2) and 1858 (1), seem to have been published in limited numbers, are very scarce and never appeared on the market. For the first 1850 edition, the Library of Congress has only photostats of a copy at the Bancroft Library.

The map belonged to the Cooper family, of Manchester, England and was purchased directly from them. For several generations, the head of the Cooper family was managing director of Stavert, Zigomala & Co. (founded 1835), one of Britain's largest manufacturers of finished cotton goods. The firm had an extensive trade throughout Latin America, particularly with Mexico and Cuba. Mexico's foreign trade, for example, was dominated by Britain, with cotton goods accounting for over one-half of the trade.

The manuscript notations show the route of an agent of Stavert, Zigomala, to Cuba, Mexico, Texas and Louisiana and probably date from during or more likely immediately after the Civil War, as the Union blockade of the Confederate States and would have made the trip difficult if not impossible, before late 1865. Landing first at Havana, the agent proceeded to Tampico and Vera Cruz and then overland through Mexico to Texas, stopping at Puebla, Mexico City, Queretaro, Saltillo, Monterey and other cities, probably to call on clients. The firms of R. Ramos and J. Aragon at Vera Cruz and Diego de la Lastra at Tampico were known clients of Stavert, Zigomala. At Matamoros, the agent crossed into Texas, where he boarded a ship at Brazos Santiago for Matagorda, Galveston and New Orleans. The visits to these southern ports may have been to call on clients for finished cotton goods0 but more likely, were related to the export of raw cotton to Britain. The export of cotton was beginning to flourish in Texas, for example, in the years after the Civil War.

Overview of the Disturnell Map.

 

Often referred to as the Disturnell "Treaty Map," the map is the most important map of the 19th Century with respect to the boundary between the United States and Mexico.

Engraved by John Disturnell in 1846, utilizing the same plate as White Gallaher & White's 1828 map of Mexico, the map would go through a number of states in a two year period, with the 7th state of the map used in 1847 by the United States and Mexico in delineating the initial boundary for the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the 12th state of the map included with the written Treaty itself, thereby placing the Disturnell map as being of equal status to the maps of John Melish and John Mitchell in American Cartographic history.

White Gallaher & White's map of 1828 was an adaptation of Tanner's English language map of Mexico (published in 1826). The three maps are exceptionally important in American History, due to their historical context and function with regard to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Together the Tanner, White, Gallaher & White and Disturnell maps represent the cartographic lineage for the mistaken location of the US-Mexico border which resulted in the boundary dispute created by the errors in Disturnell's map, following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The error originated with the mislocation of "Paso", Mexico, too far to the north, on the 1826 Tanner, which was perpetuated by the later two maps, resulting in an erroneous location of the US-Mexico boundary in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the subsequent necessity of the land acquisition by the US through the Gadsden Purchase.

Condition Description
Printed on thick paper and laid on linen. Manuscript annotations. Provenance: The Cooper Family, Stavert, Zigomala & Co., Manchester, U. K.
Reference
Lawrence Martin and Walter W. Ristow, “John Disturnell’s Map of the United Mexican States.” A La Carte (1972), pp. 204-221.