Lauren Maddox
Remembering Dr. John Rae
By Lauren Maddox
When I first began working for the AGSL and contributing to this blog, I spent a lot of time time with our polar explorers– I wrote about the Lost Franklin Expedition and the hunt to find the ship, and Dr. Elisha Kane’s affair with Margaret Fox, and about the history of the Northwest Passage. Now, as I am graduating from UWM, it seems only appropriate that I should go back to where I started: polar explorers. More specifically, I think its time to spotlight my favorite polar explorer, who has appeared in many of my posts: Dr. John Rae.
Dr. John Rae was the unsung hero in the search for the Lost Franklin Expedition– he was the first to discover what had happened in the tragic wreck that stranded Franklin and his men and report back to the British Admiralty. The discovery ruined his career; the mere suggestion that Franklin and his crew had been forced to turn to cannibalism was offensive to many, and they did not appreciate Rae’s report. It took him years to secure the reward for his crew, and they, unlike the many explorers who went searching for Franklin, were never knighted for their efforts to recover Franklin and his crew.
But Rae’s contributions to exploration and cartography went beyond his doomed discovery of the Franklin expedition; he was one of the greatest overland explorers of the 19th century, and has been credited with the true discovery of the Northwest Passage. More than all that, he was a great friend to the American Geographical Society.
Rae’s professional career began at the University of Edinburgh, where he studied medicine. Upon graduating, he was licensed to practice by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, after which he signed on with the Hudson Bay Company. While posted in Moose Factory, Ontario, Rae developed many of the qualities that he would become known for as an explorer later in his career: he worked closely with his indigenous colleagues, during a time when many European explorers refused to do so, to learn survival skills and to craft his famous snow shoes. With the knowledge he gained at Moose Factory, he was able to go on long overland expeditions without being slowed down by extra supplies or crew members.
After the Moose Factory post, Rae went on a series of overland expeditions for the Hudson Bay Company. He charted miles of arctic coast, discovering unmapped terrain and recording it for map makers. Many locations were named after him, including the Rae River and the Rae Strait along the Arctic coast.
After discovering the fate of the Lost Franklin Expedition, Rae struggled for years to secure the reward money for himself and his crew. Once they had finally been paid, if not recognized or honored, for their discovery, Rae commissioned the construction of a polar exploration vessel; unfortunately, during its brief career as a cargo vessel on the Great Lakes, the Iceberg was lost on Lake Ontario and never found again– like so many other ships lost on the Great Lakes.
Rae continued to work for the Hudson Bay Company well into his 70s, exploring the Red River area to devise locations for a telegraph line from North America to Russia. At the age of 79, he passed away from an aneurysm and was buried at the St. Magnus Cathedral, where a memorial statue was erected in his honor.
John Rae lived a full and fascinating life. Though he was never honored in his lifetime for his role in discovering the Lost Franklin Expedition, historians remember him for his many other achievements: his extensive exploration of the Arctic and the Northwest Passage; his respect for native communities and their knowledge; and his many, many contributions to the field of cartography. And personally, I will always hold an affection for John Rae, who has been my longest research-interest during my time with the AGSL.
Thank you all for reading!
Get Wrecked: Shipwrecks on the Great Lakes
By Lauren Maddox
As the weather warms up here in Milwaukee (slowly but surely) we start fantasizing about our coming summer on Lake Michigan; soon we’ll be able to walk along the beach without our coats on, go out on the water, maybe even swim if the water isn’t too cold. It’s time for swimsuits and sunscreen again! But underneath the surface and the veneer of summer fun, Lake Michigan is hiding something.
2005 Map of Lake Superior’s Known Wrecks Since 1800. Click the link to see this map in our Digital Collections!
The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum is north of Paradise, Michigan at the Whitefish Point Light. The Whitefish Point Light, first lit in 1849, is the oldest operational lighthouse on Lake Superior. Lake Superior, the most infamous of all the Great Lakes for its rocky, hard to navigate shoreline, is the final resting place for more than 550 shipwrecks– 200 of which happened in Whitefish Bay. The museum, which was founded in 1978, memorialized the tragic loss of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, which was capsized by gale force winds in November, 1975. Since it was founded, the Museum has been a place where visitors can learn about the maritime history of the Lakes and the many shipwrecks that have occurred there.
Wreck and Casualty Chart of the Great Lakes, 1894. Click the link to see this map in our Digital Collections!
Thanks to the organizations like the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum and the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, shipwrecks in Lake Superior are still being recovered. These shipwrecks were tragic events, but the debris left behind is part of our water-faring history that many organizations hope to safe keep for future generations.
The James McBride, sunk in 1857. The first ship to carry cargo from the Atlantic to port on Lake Michigan. Click the link to learn more! 
Unidentified Shipwrecks on Lake Michigan. Click the link to learn more! 
The Rising Sun, sunk in 1917. All passengers and crew rescued. Click the link to see this photo on the Smithsonian Magazine website!
The Great Lakes, due to their cold, fresh waters, preserve shipwrecks remarkably well; if left undisturbed, ships can survive for centuries at the bottom of the Lakes. On a particularly clear day in 2015, the US Coast Guard Air Station in Traverse City was able to photograph shipwrecks in Lake Michigan from the air. Generally, water conditions in the Great Lakes are not clear because algae, fed by agricultural run-off, clouds the water and obscures the shipwrecks below.
Unfortunately, despite the Lakes’ ability to preserve old ships in its waters, invasive species like the zebra mussels, will infest otherwise stable wrecks, rendering them unrecognizable and unfit for study.
The Conemaugh before it was infested by zebra mussels. Click the link to see this image on the GLSM Research Page! 
The Conemaugh after it was infested by zebra mussels. Click the link to see this image on the GLSM Research Page!
The AGSL has shipwreck charts that span decades, recording the many wrecks that have happened on the Great Lakes. Ships have been carrying goods across the Great Lakes since at least 1679, when the French vessel Griffon carried supplies to settlements along the north shore of Lake Eerie. And as long as ships have been traversing the Lakes, ships have been sinking there. The Griffon, after unloading the much-needed supplies it was carrying, was loaded up with furs and other commercial goods, only to be caught in a storm on its return trip and never seen again.
1977 Shipwreck Chart of the Great Lakes. Click the link to see this map in our Digital Collections!
Technology improved exponentially, and by the 1800s, the Great Lakes were a vital route for the shipping of goods in the Midwest; Chicago’s steel industry kick-started maritime shipping across Lake Michigan. But, of course, more ships on the water meant more potential accidents. Many of the shipwrecks you can see on these maps are from this era, before we had highways that connected our country for the easy movement of goods. Even modern ships, like the Edmund Fitzgerald, fall prey to the unpredictable conditions of the Lakes.
1991 Map Showing the Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes. Click the link to see this map in our Digital Collections!
So, this year, as we’re all getting ready to enjoy our summer by the lake, remember that there is often something else waiting to be discovered just beneath the surface.
The Phantom Ship on Crater Lake
By Lauren Maddox
Photo of Phantom Ship Island from the AGS’s 1912 Transcontinental Excursion. Click the link to see this photo in our Digital Collections!
The Klamath people have lived near Mount Mazama for over 10,000 years. According to their histories, Llao, the Chief of the Below World, attacked the community living by the volcano when a human woman refused to become his lover. Skell, the Chief of the Above World, defended the Klamath people from Llao’s rage; he chased Llao back into the mountain and smashed the mountain peak over his head, collapsing Mount Mazama and forming a huge crater. The crater filled with rain water so blue, it turned the grey mountain birds bright blue, too.
Young Mountain Bluebird from Aubudon’s Field Guide. Click the link to learn more about Mountain Bluebirds!
Lalek, a 19th century Klamath leader, interpreted this oral history before white geologists even understood the volcanic nature of Mount Mazama: 7,700 years ago, Mount Mazama violently erupted and collapsed in on itself, forming a huge crater lake. The crater was fed with snow melt and rain instead of a running water source, so its waters remain clear and shockingly blue.
Crater Lake in Oregon is the deepest lake in the United States. It has two famous islands: Wizard Island, which is a a volcanic cinder cone formed after the massive eruption of Mount Mazama, and Phantom Ship Island. Phantom Ship Island, as its name suggest, appears to be a ship when seen from a distance. Mysteriously, when the lake is foggy, the island appears to disappear, adding to the impression that it is a phantom ship. The island is made of ancient andecite rock formations, which were shaped by the hydrothermal activity of Crater Lake.
Phantom Ship Island from a distance, 1912. Click the link to see this photo in our Digital Collections!
In 1912, the American Geographical Society organized a Transcontinental Excursion to, as supposed by Geography in the Making: The American Geographical Society 1851-1951, “increase the knowledge of American geography by Europeans” and to “promote the acquaintance of European Geographers with Americans.”
1912 Article in the New York Times. Click the link to see this article on the NY Times website! 
Passengers posing by AGS Transcontinental Train. Click the link to see this photo in our Digital Collections!
One of the stops on the Transcontinental Excursion’s route was Crater Lake, where several passengers took photos of Phantom Ship Lake.
Closeup of Phantom Ship Island. Click the link to see this photo in our Digital Collections! 
Photo of Phantom Ship Island. Click the link to see this photo in our Digital Collections!
While Phantom Ship Island may resemble a ghost ship, it is not the most mysterious phenomenon on Crater Lake. Some visitors to the park report seeing campfire on the uninhabited islands, and eerie sounds plague tourists who choose to stay in the Crater Lake Lodge. But by far, the most inexplicable occurrence on the lake.
The first account of the Old Man of the lake was written in 1902; Joseph S. Diller reported a stump floating upright in the lake. The Old Man is a more than 100 year old hemlock tree that floats, as reported, completely upright in Crater Lake. The Old Man travels by floating across the lake, sometimes over 60 miles, never upending. The Old Man is allowed to float freely now, because once, when scientists tied the Old Man to the shore to prevent him from disrupting navigation of the lake, he called a storm that didn’t subside until he was released.
Though Crater Lake has a strange and magical history, somehow Phantom Ship Island through the fog is not the most unusual sight visitors might encounter. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t eerie!
Phantom Ship Island. Click the link to see this photo in our Digital Collections!
Cancelled Maps and March Mapness
By Lauren Maddox
As schools prepare to move online and sport’s seasons are postponed, cancellation is on everyone’s minds. While looking through the drawer of Madagascar maps, a graduate student intern found a map with
“CANCELLED” printed on the verso:
The main map “Madagascar rainfall chart” from the Great Britian Eastern African Army from 1942 stands as a historical record of the key role recycling and material conservation played during war time. Obsolete maps or extra printings would have been re-used such as this Madagascar map.
Another great example of reusing paper can be seen on this map of Martinique also from 1942. The map is also printed on verso of an obsolete chart with a more detailed cancellation pattern overprinted to obscure that chart’s details.
This has been a hard week for many people, sports fans included. We understand that without basketball, hockey, and baseball games, March just won’t be the same. But we hope that we can lift your spirits and give you something to cheer for! While you’re at home practicing responsible social distancing over the extended Spring Break, the AGSL invites you to participate in March Mapness! We will be voting on our Instagram story to decide which map in our collections is the best! The first round will be March 16th, and then we’ll vote on the last two maps standing on March 30th. Please join us on Instagram to celebrate March Mapness!
On the Road to Algoe: Revisiting the Paper Town
By Lauren Maddox
John Green’s Paper Towns posed a question that stumped many of its readers: how can spaces be simultaneously fictitious and real?
The novel was received by an excited public in 2008; the book won the Edgar Award, was Editor’s Choice for book of the year at Booklist and Voya, and was top of the list for Best Book at the Chicago and New York public libraries. In 2014 and 2015 interest in the novel and its faux-setting peaked– Paper Towns was being adapted into a film starring Nat Wolff and Cara Delevingne. Excitement for the move inspired a plethora of articles by news outlets like NPR, MNN, and Gizmodo describing the paper town that the book is centered around: Algoe, New York.
Check this book out from the UWM library! Click the link to learn more.
Algoe was unique in that it wasn’t and then was and then wasn’t a real place. Mapmakers would sometimes include fictitious entries as a way to subtly sign their work. It’s almost impossible to prove that a representation of reality has been copied, but copyright traps were a way to prove that a work had been stolen. If the copycat included the fictional place names from the original map in their version, the original mapmaker could prove that it was their intellectual property. Algoe was one of these copyright traps. It appeared to be a small hamlet in upstate New York, nestled between interstate routes. In reality, “Algoe” was just an anagram of mapmakers Otto G. Lindberg’s and Ernest Alpers’s initials.
Esso bought the map from Lindberg and Alpers and began distributing it. A few years later, Algoe appeared on another map by Randy McNally. Lindberg accused McNally of having stolen the map because, of course, Algoe wasn’t a real place. But McNally protested. His company had gotten the records of Algoe completely legally. A general store owner had seen the town name Algoe on the Esso map years earlier and decided to name his general store after it. Just like that, Algoe had become a real place. After a few years, the store shut down, and Algoe ceased to exist again. You can still find it, though, if you search for Algoe on Google Maps.
Photo of Delaware County, New York, where Algoe was supposed to be. Click this link to see this photo in our Digital Collections!
Trap streets and paper towns were just one way that a mapmaker might mark their work– the map sheets below, which are part of a survey of the Gold Coast (now Ghana), depict a hidden elephant in the elevation chart. Frank Jacobs’s “How to Hide an Elephant in a Map” tells the story of a hot, uncomfortable British surveying expedition who, upon discovering a particularly inaccessible stretch of land, decided to just doodle an elephant and call it a day.
1964 Edition of the Gold Coast Survey Maps. Click the link to check out our Flickr! 
Three editions featuring the elephant. Click the link to check out out Flickr!
In this case, the hidden mark on the map wasn’t to protect intellectual property; apparently, the expedition decided to fill the blank space in their survey so that they could pack up and go home. But the result was the same– the creator’s left a unique stamp on their work that was copied in later editions over and over again. Just in the AGSL archives, there are three editions of this map sheet with the elephant from 1924, 1951, and 1964.
We expect maps to tell the truth– they appear, on the surface, to be objective representations of reality. But the truth is, they often aren’t; mapmakers and the people who finance them have an agenda. In Algoe’s case, it was a white lie designed to protect the intellectual property of mapmakers who wouldn’t otherwise be able to prove that their work had been stolen. And the tired British expedition’s elephant was a way for them to avoid traversing any deeper into an inaccessible landscape. These are the innocent lies that maps sometimes tell us– but other times, a map could be lying to us for other, more nefarious reasons.
Monmonier’s How to Lie with Maps. Click the link to see this book in our Digital Collections!
Mark Monmonier’s How to Lie with Maps outlines the many lies, harmless or not, that maps sometimes tell us. According to Monmonier, “map users…need to appreciate the perils and limitations” of maps because they are “rhetorical tools fully capable of ‘lying'” to us, accidentally and purposefully. These lies can be fairly small– a fake hamlet in upstate New York or an elephant masquerading as a hill. Algoe isn’t a threat to our perceptions of reality. However, it does remind us that maybe our maps aren’t as truthful as we like to believe.
In 1993, a series of cases against the board game company behind Trivial Pursuit ended the use of copyright traps. The courts found that, in the same way you can’t copyright a real place, you can’t copyright a lie. No one looks for these copyright traps anymore, since they aren’t functional protections against copycat map makers– which means there might be even more hidden places on our maps, waiting to be discovered.
Disney’s Darkest Day
By Lauren Maddox
July 17th is celebrated at Disneyland as the park’s official opening day. This year marks the 65th anniversary– Disney hasn’t announced any official celebration plans yet, but fans can most likely expect a birthday bash to remember. The park’s anniversary wasn’t always celebrated on July 17th, however; during Walt Disney’s life, the official date was July 18th, one day after what we consider to be the opening day now.
Walt Disney was adamant that the July 17th opening not be acknowledged as the official opening– and with good reason. July 17th, 1955 was such a disaster that Disney sometimes called it “Black Sunday.”
Expectations for the July 17th preview day were high. Disney had been planning his amusement park since at least 1948, when he sent the first memo to Dick Kelsey describing his plans for a Mickey Mouse theme-park. But the original idea pre-dated even this first draft of the park concept; Disney’s own father worked at the World’s Columbia Exposition in 1893.
Map of the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Click the link to see this map in our Digital Collections! 
Map of the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Click the link to see this map in our Digital Collections!
The World’s Columbia Exposition was a Chicago’s World’s Fair held in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s first arrival in North America. The Fair was supposed to be a symbol of the burgeoning ideas of American exceptionalism and Chicago’s recovery from 1871 fire. The Fair was a monumental undertaking; the grounds covered more than 650 acres, and nearly 26 million visitors passed through. More important to Disney’s story than the grandiosity of the fair: the 1893 World’s Fair was the first to host a dedicated amusement park area.
His father’s memories of that Fair and its amusement rides stayed with Disney until his own fatherhood. Disney cited watching his children on a merry-go-round as the final inspiration that lead him to Disneyland.
Disney talking to a group of children at Disneyland in 1957. Click the link to see this photo in our Digital Archives!
Besides his tender family memories, Disney also had a practical reason to build an amusement park. He was, after all, a businessman first. As Disney’s animation studio in Burbank gained more success, more and more fans wanted to come visit. The inside of an animation studio isn’t actually that interesting, and it would be hard to get any work done with crowds of tourists peeking in on the animators who worked there.
The original plans for Disneyland put the amusement park right next door to the Burbank studio. After realizing how much of an undertaking (and how many more acres) the amusement park was going to be, Disney moved the location to the Anaheim site.
Disney entertaining King Muhammad V at Disneyland, 1957. Click the link to see this photo in our Digital Archives!
For the preview day, Disney invited a select group of 14,000 guests. This included the press as well as friends and families. This was the first thing to go wrong that day. Around twice as many guests actually showed up to the park– many had purchased counterfeit tickets to gain entry to the preview day opening, but many more simply climbed over the walls and broke into the park. Disneyland, for the day, was only prepared to serve the 14,000 intended guests; vendors ran out of food, half of the water fountains weren’t functioning because the plumbers working on the park went on strike (and offered the ultimatum “bathrooms or water fountains”). The event was sponsored by Pepsi, so many park-goers accused Disney of forcing them to buy drinks by sabotaging the water fountains. It was an unseasonably warm day for Anaheim, and the freshly poured asphalt was so soft that women’s high heels would sink into it.
Besides these critical logistical failures, the media coverage of the event was a circus. Disney himself missed the cue to read his dedication, and said, to the camera live and on air, that he’d thought he’d been given the signal to start. Bob Cummings was caught on camera flirting with the dancers and even kissing one girl. Other commentators lost their mics and had to cover for themselves while the tapes ran on.
In summary, the whole day was deeply embarrassing to Disney. He never acknowledged the July 17th preview as the opening day of Disneyland, and it was only after his death that it was adopted as the official anniversary.
Disney’s legacy lives on, for all the good and ills that entails. But perhaps his greatest contribution to the amusement park circuit, besides Disneyland itself, is the impact his choices made on amusement park cartography.
When Disney was first pitching the park idea to investors, he used maps created by Herbert Ryman to help draw the picture of the park that he was imagining and struggling to put into words. Ryman’s version of the park didn’t make it to brochures, partially because his maps were of an imaginary park that wasn’t quite the same as the real Disneyland.
The 1953 Ryman Map of Disneyland from the New York Times. Click the link to see the rest of this article!
Due to budgeting issues, the official map of Disneyland took another three years after opening day to create. Sam McKim was the artist behind the first official park maps in 1958. The maps, at this point, still had some aspirations for parts of Disneyland not yet built, but mostly functioned as tools for park-goers to use to find their way around and as free souvenirs they could take home. Sam McKim’s maps ran, with some slight adjustments over the years, until 1964. For his contributions to the Disney brand, he was named “Map Maker to the Kingdom” and a tribute to his work can still be found at Disneyland.
McKim’s 1958 Map of Disneyland. Click the link to see this map on Mouse Maps!
Maps as souvenirs was not a new concept; many World’s Fairs gave out artful brochure maps for visitors to remember their day at the Fair. But McKim’s willingness to push the boundaries of realistic map making in order to appeal to the imaginative and exciting nature of Disneyland revolutionized the amusement park map. After McKim, the artists behind the brochure maps became anonymous, but his impact on the work remains clear.
1968 Map of Disneyland. This version removed Edison Square and Liberty Park, which were not built but still included on the previous generation of maps. Click the link to see this map in our Digital Collections!
Cartography was a key tool in Disneyland’s creation. And it continues to be an important part of the Disneyland brand an experience– but more than that, the maps at Disneyland give us a way to take the park home. That first day may have been a disaster, but many, many Disney fans have experienced and loved the park since then. Happy 65th anniversary! Remember to take a map before you go–they help us find our way.
American Geographical Society Councilman Roosevelt and his Geographer
By Lauren Maddox
The American Geographical Society’s council has been host to some famous and interesting members– Rockefellers and Tiffanys, even. But even with a cast of fascinating characters, it’s hard to outshine Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Through Roosevelt and Bowman’s letters, we can track the progression of Roosevelt’s health and his political career. Roosevelt often sent letters apologizing for his absence from AGS Council meetings, due to travel and health problems both.
As Roosevelt’s political career progressed, his ability to attend council meetings and participate in Society work was greatly hampered. He was elected governor and then president during his tenure on the council! In 1932, he was forced to resign from his position as council member in light of his impending Presidency. Roosevelt served on the American Geographical Society’s council for more than 10 years– he was a busy man but always believed in the Society’s mission and continued to think kindly of them after his obligations to his office prevented him from participating on the council.
Roosevelt’s relationship with the AGS of New York didn’t end with his resignation from the council, however. The two men continued to correspond, and Roosevelt made Isaiah Bowman a State Department adviser during World War II.
This wasn’t the first time Isaiah Bowman had gained the confidence of a President; in 1917, he offered the AGS’s resources to the government and became close to Woodrow Wilson. His insight played a key role in how territory was distributed as part of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. It wasn’t surprising that FDR would keep Bowman and his geographical and cartographic resources in mind during World War II. As an adviser in the State Department, Bowman participated in the Dumbarton Oaks Conference and the San Francisco Conference, which established the United Nations. During this time, Bowman was still President of John Hopkins, and he established the Applied Physics Laboratory, where technologies like the Proximity Fuze were created. Bowman was a useful man for the president to rely on.
“The Odyssey of FDR” is an unflattering map of FDR’s political exploits up to 1939.
It was, however, surprising that Roosevelt enlisted Bowman to help find and establish refuge for Jewish emigrants displaced by the war. Bowman was a known antisemite who put policies into place at John Hopkins to limit the number of Jewish students admitted to the school. Neil Smith’s American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization revealed Bowman’s prejudiced policies at John Hopkins and his treatment of Jewish students there. Unsurprisingly, Bowman’s search for refuge for Jewish emigrants lead him to five different countries, not one of which was the United States.
The collection of Roosevelt’s and Bowman’s letters in the AGSL collections help track the rise of Roosevelt to power, and the years-long relationship he maintained with the American Geographical Society and its leadership. Reading through their letters lets us watch as history unfolds before us all over again– and reminds us of the private lives that influence our public histories.
You can find more about Roosevelt and Bowman at the Archives of the American Geographical Society digital collection: https://uwm.edu/lib-collections/agsny/
The Mysterious Case of Ernest G. Lemcke
By Lauren Maddox
Sometimes I like to pull back the curtain a bit for you– show you some of the behind-the-scenes work that goes on unseen at the AGSL. I was given a special project a few months ago that I thought the readers of this blog would be interested in hearing about.
Some things about me you need to know: I love puzzles and I have never seen Mission Impossible. Most of the AGSL staff loves puzzles; we are currently working on a 4,000 piece puzzle (which you can see if you visit us!). Generally, my work at the AGSL has me at a desk writing– that’s my job. But sometimes someone gives me something different to work on.
Susan Peschel stopped by my desk with a nondescript beige box.
“Your mission, should you choose to accept it–” she stopped to ask me if I remembered Mission Impossible. I didn’t, but I had at least heard the quote before. Susan told me that she had a puzzle for me (and that it might explode once she walked away).
The problem with the box, which had traveled with the AGSL’s collection from New York to Milwaukee in the 70s, was that it had never been archived. The papers in the box were unsorted– no one even knew what they were. By all appearances, the collection of handwritten pages and letters seemed random. There were maps in the pile, but they were either hand-drawn or, stranger, road maps that had been drawn over. My mission (and I did accept it) was to figure out what we had and then to put it into some semblance of order.
We didn’t know much, but we did know his name: Ernest G. Lemcke. We knew he was a card-carrying member of the American Geographical Society of New York because we have a record of his membership dues:
He wrote a trove of letters to Ena L. Yonge and John K. Wright. He bought a roadmap in 1926 and hand-drew a medieval military event in England from the 1300s. He was a book publisher in New York– which I discovered because some of his stationery had letterhead from Lemcke&Buechner, “Booksellers, publishers, importers.”
Part of the trouble with deciphering the box was figuring out what was meant for who. The maps were easy– Ena L. Yonge was map curator for the AGS of New York at the time, and his maps often came with a letter explaining what they were. But the partial manuscripts, many handwritten first drafts, and article corrections for the AGS’s periodical were mysterious and dense.
After many fruitless Google searches, I learned a few things about Lemcke: besides being a book publisher, he was also a historian with several books out, many specifically interested in the “Tribal Hidage” in Wessex. As it turns out, the University of New Hampshire also has a collection of Lemcke papers! Which was how I tracked down some of his publications and discovered that the many handwritten pages about a “tribal hidage” and the first English Census were partial drafts of his later, completed publications.
Now that I had a better idea of what we had, I came to the next part of the puzzle: putting it in order. I started with separating the things that were obviously addressed to Yonge or Wright. Maps were obviously meant for Yonge, and corresponded with letters that he had sent. John K. Wright was once director of the AGS of New York, but that didn’t help place many of Lemcke’s letters. But as it turned out, before he was director, Wright was the editor of the AGS’s regular publication from 1920-1956. This was exactly the period of time Lemcke was writing. The periodical corrections, then, seemed to be for the editor of the publication. And after reading Lemcke’s letters, I found him explaining corrections to his manuscript to Wright.
Once the letters were sorted by recipient, I started to put them in a chronological order. Some of the letters were dated– those were easy. But many of the letters weren’t dated. For several of them, I found a reference he made to an article he had just read, which helped me place it in the chronology. But many more had to be dated by their relationship to the other letters, which made for some puzzling work.
After finishing the work of putting the box in order, it was time to have it officially archived. This was definitely out of my expertise, so I reached out to fellow graduate intern Georgia Brown, who consulted our curator, Marcy Bidney, about what to do with the box.
Soon, the Lemcke papers will be officially archived! Since all of his correspondence was addressed to Ena L. Yonge and John K. Wright, the letters will be incorporated into their existing correspondence collections, cataloged, and made available for viewing! And now, with a little puzzling, we have put a years-old AGSL mystery to rest.
Egyptomania in the AGSL Archives
By Lauren Maddox
In 1798, Napoleon launched an invasion into then-Ottoman territories in Egypt and Syria in order to disrupt Eastern trade for Britain. Napoleon wanted to “liberate” India from British rule, but knew that France’s newly formed navy was not going to be a match for Britain’s own naval forces. So, to avoid a confrontation at sea, Napoleon chose to confront the British and their allies over land.
Henri Bechard’s Photo of the Hypostile Hall in Ramesseum Temple in Thebes. Click the link to see this image in our Digital Archives!
The primary motivation of the invasion was to challenge British trade structures, but Napoleon was also interested in promoting scientific pursuits in the region and making new discoveries about the ever-romanticized ancient Egypt. Napoleon styled himself as Roman, after all. Napoleon was a fierce Corsican nationalist, and of course became the emperor of France, but often identified most with an Italian ancestry of conquerors and colonizers. Some of his interest in Egypt could have been related to this stylization. Octavius annexed Egypt into the Roman Empire after deposing Pharaoh Cleopatra, officially incorporating it as the Roman province of Egypt in 30 B.C.E. Napoleon, a self-styled descendant of Roman imperialists, was interested in Egypt as a former piece of the Roman Empire, and as a leader looking to establish a French Empire.
The invasion was a failure; the three factions of the Ottoman Empire and the British forces overpowered French troops, forcing them to withdraw without having achieved their primary military goals. But the impact of Napoleon’s military operation went beyond its failure. Besides the military forces, Napoleon also recruited a large number of scholars (called his “savants”) to accompany the army in an exploratory expedition. There is some debate about Napoleon’s motives– the inclusion of the savants could have been proof of his dedication to the ideals of the Enlightenment, or a ruse to cover the campaign’s true militaristic and colonial intentions.
Whatever their true purpose, the savants attempted to create passage through the Suez Canal, drafted maps of roads and ancient cities, established an institute to promote scientific and agricultural advancement in Egypt, recorded and cataloged the flora and fauna of the region, uncovered and collected artifacts (without the permission of Egyptians, it is worth noting), and even “recovered” the Rosetta Stone. Few of the artifacts ever actually made it to France; much of the work was confiscated by the British and is now displayed in British Museums. Of course, these artifacts are rightfully Egyptian, and were taken as part of colonial appropriation, but were not returned by the French or the British even after colonization efforts ceased.
Volumes of Description. 
Photo of multiple volumes of Description in our rare collections room. 
Note of Acquisition by the AGSL. 
Title Page 
Condition of the volume. 
Title Page 
AGSL Stamped! 
Royal Armorial Crest
To bring this new knowledge of Egypt to the people back in France, the savants compiled an initial collection of their findings in 4 volumes: Mémoires sur l’Égypte. After defeat in Egypt, Napoleon had a more comprehensive collection compiled and published: the Description de l’Egypte. The first edition included 23 volumes compiled through the collaboration of the 167 savants and thousands of artists and technicians, including 400 engravers.
Description was wildly popular in Enlightened France, where interest in foreign places was high. The vivid engravings and detailed descriptions sparked interest in the West– Egyptology was born. Egyptology, which became a Western pastime and eventually developed into a full-on craze for hobby-historians and professionals alike, covers the ancient history, religion, language, architecture, and art of Egypt. Ancient Egypt continued to be an exotic fantasy to Westerners.
Egyptomania spread through Europe and the rest of the West– especially the United States of America, where Egypt became a model for the young nation still developing its identity as a sovereign state. Throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th, echoes of Egyptian (or, as the case may be, “Egyptian”) art and architecture resounded through the West.
The influence of Egyptomania can still be seen in famous architecture, monuments, and art. Some very obvious examples: the Washington Monument and the Luxor Hotel.
A fire at the Institut d’Egypte was rumored to have destroyed the original manuscript, but the volumes were recovered and restored safely. The collection that started it all, Napoleon’s savants’ Description de l’Egypte still survives! And we have a first edition copy here at the AGSL. The volumes are filled with beautifully colored engravings, particularly in Books 19 and 20, which cover Egypt’s natural history. The level of detail in the engravings is remarkable. This is an amazing piece of history that’s here in our library! Which, in its own way, is a sign that Egyptomania persists in the West– or at least it does here in the AGSL.
Salt of the Earth
By Lauren Maddox
Instagram has changed the way we vacation– our destinations don’t just need to look good in person. They also need to look good for the camera. This age of aesthetic vacationing has sent trendy tourists to the salt production operation in Las Coloradas, at the very tip of the Yucatan Peninsula. You’ve actually probably seen these pictures– pretty, bikini-clad women perched on flamingo pool-floaties drifting across the pink, uber-salt water of a man-made salt evaporation pond.
Detail of Los Coloradas 
2004 Map of Yucatan. Click the link to see this map in our Digital Collections!
These places may not be as picturesque as millenial trendsetters make them out to be– in essence, the salt lakes at Los Coloradas are a step in an assembly line. They’re salt evaporation ponds designed to extract sea salt for table salt. Several different colors of salt are harvested from the lakes– though the lakes are actually pink because of the micro-organisms that thrive in highly salinated environments. But the flamingo habitat nearby still seems pretty on brand.
And because of the influx of tourists, the salt production plant has had to put fences around the lakes to keep people from swimming in them. You can still take a tour, but it’s not really the same without the novelty pool-floaty. The ponds aren’t dangerous to swim in, but if you had scratches, it would be a pretty unpleasant and unrefreshing dip in the pool. And this is a food production facility– people swimming in the lakes does seem like a contamination concern.
Roi Et Province in Thailand, 1940. Families turned natural brine into salt using evaporation. Click the link to see this photo in our Digital Collection!
But besides being a great photo-op, salt evaporation and collection has been a center of civilization since antiquity. The oldest known towns in Europe were centered around salt production because salt allowed for the preservation and trading of food across longer distances. The ancient roads that all lead to Rome were first used to transport salt back to the city from the empire’s many, saltier territories. Salt made other ancient empires like Egypt and China stable and prosperous, which created opportunities for technological advancement. And salt’s deep connection to the beginnings of civilization is still visible today– the word salary is derived from the Latin word for salt, English towns with names ending in -wich were named for their connection to salt production, and now Instagram influencers can pose with modern salt production facilities for the aesthetic.
The Salar de Atacama Salt Flat in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. From Mary Light Leader and Dr. Leaders 1937 Collection of photos. Click the link to see this photo in our Digital Collections!
Now salt is pretty cheap– most people have to worry about eating too much salt. But salt production, and the old methods of salt harvesting, are still a key global industry. And a great backdrop for your vacation pics (with the facility’s permission).
Salar del Rincon in Argentina, from Isaiah Bowman’s 1913 Expedition to the Central Andes. Click the link to see this photo in our Digital Collections!
American Geographical Society Library 