The Cundall and Wright Maps of 1851-61 – The Birth of Island Cartography.
Henry Cundall’s Map of Prince Edward Island
Henry Jones Cundall (1833 – 1916) was an extraordinary man during a period when loud blusterers dominated the social and political scene. He came from a good, well-to-do family and, by all accounts, had a reserved personality. He remained a bachelor all his life and filled his time with his various passions, chief of which were surveying and photography, in which he was a pioneer.
His parents were English and had extensive landholdings which never really paid off. He was apprenticed to a surveyor at the age of 16 and began to work for the Cunard brothers, and by 1853 had become their surveyor. In time, having grown wealthy, he became a great philanthropist and eventually left his house, Beaconsfield (now the home of the Heritage Foundation) as a home to girls of slender means. He had an interesting life. Not only was he at one time Headmaster of the Central Academy but was manager of the dubious Bank of Prince Edward Island.
A very fine account of Henry Cundall is to be found in Dr. Ed MacDonald’s article in Number 34 of the Island Magazine – The Master of Beaconsfield.
http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/cundall_henry_jones_14E.html
Cundall is best remembered for producing an exceptionally accurate and cleanly organised engraved map of Prince Edward Island in 1851. It is a thing of austere beauty and based on Henry Bayfield’s Admiralty Charts.
You may recall that it was Bayfield, 75 years after Holland’s great map, who discovered that there were major discrepancies in acreage along the shores surveyed by Holland. Armed with the latest surveying equipment Bayfield must have been surprised – shocked – again and again, especially in West Prince County, when the outline of the Island he drew did not correspond with Holland. Vast acreage that had been recorded on the Holland map that simply did not exist on the land mass he was recording.
In recent years, first Lockerby and Sobey (2015, pp. 44-46), and then S. Max Edelson (2018) superimposed the Holland Outline on a satellite view of the Island as it is today. Edelson used georeferencing techniques to fit Holland into the curvature of the earth. Doing these superimpositions with the three maps known for having the greatest integrity – Holland 1765, the Holland-Lewis 1765 and the lovely presentation map of 1767 – Edelson found significant variations in the overlay patterns in all three of them, and the results for all three differed in various places. The most dramatically revealing was the original manuscript, shown here. Looking carefully, you can make out the outlines of the satellite and the map, contrasted to about 50%.
www.viseyes.org/mapscholar/?2165&p=30
In their measurements Lockerby and Sobey calculated that Thomas Wright, one of Holland’s surveyors in charge of that area, had added over 20,000 acres to the Island’s surface just in the area west of the Portage Isthmus. He did similar things in other places where he surveyed, along with neglecting various inlets with their inland configurations. You can’t blame him for this lack of detail because this work was done in winter when everything was covered over with heavy snow. Holland, in his wisdom, distanced himself from future finger pointing by carefully cataloguing the precise extent of the work done by each of his surveyors, including himself, on the big map that created the Island Artefact. As an aside, Earle Lockerby wrote a most interesting article on Thomas Wright in Number 66 of The Island Magazine – “Thomas Wright and the Holland Survey.”
These mistakes would cause endless trauma to surveyors plotting out farm lots for new settlers until these issues began to be resolved after the middle of the Nineteenth Century. After Bayfield, with his new, more accurate outline, it became apparent that a new map of the Island was badly needed.
Cundall’s achievement, so stark in its simplicity, has been described as lifeless, but that is not the case. Cundall looked at Prince Edward Island as a British Colony, most severely bounded, and containing the feudal divisions of county, parish, township, capital towns, church and school lands. The 67 lots created a grid that would bode no argument with the ambitions of developers. All had been pre-ordained by Holland’s survey and the uniqueness of Cundall’s map is that everything up to 1851, that is a geographical feature, has been accounted for, and is waiting to be used, developed and expanded by the colonists. Politics, greed and sectarian conflicts are absent in this ordered world.
What Cundall did not do – significantly – was to introduce the personalities of the landlords with their ambitions and struggles as names written across each lot, immediately conjuring the most violent and anxious emotions in the eyes of the beholder. This is clear austere officially-defined topography, far away from the pressing realities of the duties of landlords, the collection of rents and the passing on of some of that money to fund the operations of the colony. Pure and simple, it is a map without local politics. It is the stage for the ordered performance of the colonial drama.
Henry Cundall’s 1851 Map
In 1851, using the Bayfield surveys, Cundall drew a completely new map of Prince Edward Island that attempted to correct the aberrations present in the original Holland survey.
Cundall’s map does not appear to be an official endeavour because he was not Surveyor General. In fact, George Wright, the Province’s Surveyor General was at work on an identical project, which I will discuss shortly. Cundall would have relied extensively on the Bayfield surveys for the general outline, but being an experienced surveyor himself, and deeply aware of the necessity of not only displaying the official divisions of the Island, he had to correctly position the different grades of roads, the churches, schools and the different kinds of mills, which were numerous, and necessary for food and lumber.
Modern observers may wonder at all the little symbols denoting the presence of grist and sawmills all over the settlements. Today we need to be reminded that the sawmills provided all the wood for construction, the grist mills the flour to bake bread. They were vital to life and settlement. They had to be in every possible space, close to every settlement, because there were no functional roads for predictable transport.
To record all this information, Cundall would have had to be familiar with the interior of the Island. Of particular importance was the detailed recording of every river, stream and brook – all left out in the Holland survey – and which were essential for transport and waterpower. What we see in this map then, is the first complete picture of Prince Edward Island as a colony in the process of settlement, the first map to correspond to the European vision of a settled place. Above all, as a matter of pride, it was the first map published on the Island.
1851 – Henry J. Cundall, PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND/ IN THE/ Gulf of St. Lawrence/ COMPILED FROM THE LATEST SURVEYS/ BY H. J. CUNDALL. 1851/ DEDICATED BY PERMISSION TO HIS EXCELLENCY/ Sir Alexander Bannerman/ KNIGHT, LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR &C. &C./ CHARLOTTETOWN, GEORGE T. HASZARD, / Edinburgh, Oliver & Boyde. Liverpool, Wilmer & Smith. London, Bagster &Son. / W. H. Lizars, Edinburgh. Copperplate engraving, 430 x 950 cm, printed for George T. Haszard, Charlottetown and engraved by W. H. Lizars, Edinburgh. R. Porter Collection.
(Not having access to a large archival scan of this map I had to make do, for the time being, with a photograph of my own copy of the map photographed through glass. I hope to provide a better view when I take the frame apart and photograph the original at high resolution in the best light.)
1851 Cundall map of PEI – Porter Coll.
http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio.php?id_nbr=7309
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Home_Lizars
This map is significant because of its accuracy, clarity and simplicity, and would inspire another cartographer, George Wright, from the dynasty of surveyors going back to the time of Holland, to produce his own map – more or less identical to Cundall’s – but with the extremely important addition of all the landlords of the 67 townships and the distribution of what little Crown Land there was.
Prelude to the New Wright Map
There is, in the Provincial Archives, an unlabelled manuscript draft of a map of Prince Edward Island that at one time had been heavily edited. It is scribbled all over as if road information were being updated everywhere and new place names inserted. I suspect that this is the near to final draft of George Wright’s map which would be published in 1852.
Circa 1851 – Unlabelled manuscript draft for a Map of Prince Edward Island, probably by George Wright. – PARO PEI 1159 03.
Because of its importance to students of the settlement development on the Island I include a pdf of it.
1851 (possibly) Draft of Wright Map – PARO 1159
George Wright, Grandson of Thomas Wright
George Wright (1810–1887) came from a family whose name was associated with surveying since the days of Samuel Holland. His grandfather, Thomas Wright (c. 1740-1812), was a very young member of Holland’s team (he was only 25), and we have already met him, in unfortunate circumstances, as the surveyor who, somehow or other, in the dead of winter, added over 20,000 acres to the mass of West Prince County. Nonetheless, he was an accomplished mathematician and was sought out to be one of those to observe the Transit of Venus in 1769 (Wright 2009, p. 18). That was a very great honour bestowed by the Astronomer Royal. This was part of the ongoing project of establishing ways of obtaining perfect longitude. In all this, he continued to work with Holland in his further surveys in the Atlantic region. The list of his surveys is long and distinguished. After a colourful career he contrived to pass on his position to his sons and grandson and for an 80-year period the family name was associated with that of Chief Surveyor of the Island.
http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/wright_george_1810_87_11E.html
The Wright Map of 1852
Our cartographer of the 1852 map, George Wright, was probably trained by his father and by 1829 was working as an assistant in the office of the Surveyor General. In 1835 he became acting Surveyor General when his father moved on to a position in government. In 1842, when his father died, George was provisionally appointed to the position until confirmation was received from England. The Colonial Office rejected this display of nepotism but in the end relented and George Wright became Surveyor General. The next 12 years did nothing to make Wright feel he was part of the establishment. When the colony attained responsible government in 1851 Wright’s duties were transferred to other departments and even though he kept his position until 1854 he did not receive any salary.
The miraculous event that crowns these years of insecurity and humiliation is that George Wright managed, as part of his duties as Surveyor General, unpaid, to produce this extremely fine map, hard on the heels of Cundall, whose map had appeared the previous year. The cartouche of the map is very handsome and, although it is engraved and printed by a whole new set of English mapmakers, it was published in Charlottetown.
1852 – George Wright, MAP/ of/ PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND,/ in the/ GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE,/ Comprising the latest Topographical information/ afforded by the Surveyor Generals Office/ and other authentic Sources./ The Sea Coast, Rivers, &c. being laid down from the Survey/ recently completed by Captain H. W. Bayfield R. N./ BY/ GEORGE WRIGHT ESQR./ Surveyor General./ 1852./ PUBLISHED UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF/ THE COLONIAL LEGISLATURE/ (and next follows a list of where the map is sold) Charlotte Town, Henry Stamper – London, Letts Royal Exchange & Trelawney Saunders, 6 Charing Cross _ Liverpool, Waring Webb _ Glasgow, Duncan Macgregor _ Aberdeen, D. Wyllie & Sons. Engraved map on linen backing, 129.5 x 68 cm. This PARO copy has in the past been heavily annotated. PARO 1169.
1852 George Wright Map – PARO 1169
The most dramatic change from the simplicity of the Cundall map is the addition of all the names of the landlords for each township You can see the names inserted clearly in this detail from Lots 1 and 2, where minor roads are also named as well as new small communities identified. This carries on through the map as you can see in the pdf attachment.
The presence of the Acadian enclave in Lot 15 is clearly noted and sounds an alarm that this concentration of French-speaking settlers is something to be reckoned with. It is unusual at this time to encounter the word “Acadian” when in ordinary parlance they were simply “the French” and would continue to be called that into our present times. Cundall, no doubt fully aware of this Acadian concentration, would have avoided inserting anything that would have brought personalities into his perfect colonial world plan.
This grubby and battered copy, the only one which the Public Archives has scanned, is of extra interest because it is scribbled all over with new information up to 1859. Samuel Cunard, with the stroke of a pen, is upgraded to Sir Samuel the Baronet. This is probably the work of Henry Cundall who, in 1861 would bring out a new edition of this map, under his and Wright’s name, with many updates that record changes in the topography of settlement on the Island but also changes which enhance and push forward the presence of the landlords introduced by Wright in his 1852 map.
By 1861 Wright had become colonial treasurer and would remain so until his retirement in 1867 and so had little or no part in the fate of his map as Cundall applied his revisions. He spent his last years in his private surveying practice.
A Colourful Map of the Region
In our examination of all the maps that could be located that show Prince Edward Island in a chronological sequence, this colourful map, with an endless inscription in the cartouche that sets out to avoid any controversy over plagiarism, does not add anything new beyond the wealth found in the Wright map. It is included here simply for the record.
1852 – NOVA SCOTIA/ AND PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND. / Second Edition with 200 Additional Names/ 1852. / PUBLISHED BY JAMES DAWSON, / PICTOU, N.S./ Under the title cartouche is the following note: The First Edition of the Map, compiled from previous authorities, with much original matter, was printed in Edinburgh in 1847. In 1849, a Map professing to be an original compilation, but in reality an almost perfect Facsimile of the Edition of 1847, was printed in Boston, and issued in Nova Scotia, without consent of the Compiler or Publisher of the Map of 1847. These facts are stated here, that the plagiarism, if any, may be attributed to the appropriate parties. Cloth backed coloured map, Second Edition, 49 x 61 cm, folded to 15 x 10 cm. Below the map border, Compiled by J. W. Dawson/ W. L. Tod Lithogr. Edinburgh. Digital reproduction from the W. K. Morrison Special Collection of the J. B. Hall Library at the NSCC Centre of Geographic Sciences, WKM-M-216.
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND NEW FORMS OF TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION
It was in the 1840s that a new transportation phenomenon – the railway – evolved to the point where it was mechanically reliable enough to carry goods and passengers over long distances through what was once wilderness. Like the Roman roads of Antiquity, the tracks went where they were needed, in a straight line. Rivers were bridged with the new cast iron technology of the Industrial Revolution and tunnels blasted through mountains to level the grade of the tracks. The railways also came to the attention of all nations as being the perfect way to transport rapidly, troops and the weapons of war, to any location in the region.
This 1850 lithographed map shows how far railways had progressed in Canada and the United States by the middle of the century.
1850 – MAP/ OF THE/ EUROPEAN AND NORTH AMERICAN/ RAILWAY, / SHOWING ITS CONNECTION WITH THE RAILWAYS/ OF THE/ UNITED STATES & CANADA. / Made by direction of His Excellency John Hubbard, Governor of Maine/ under the Resolve of Aug 20th. 1850./ [signed] a. c. Morton, Engineer. / and in the lower right corner, Bowen & Co. lith. Philada. Lithograph with hand-coloured details, 66 x 76 cm. Library of Congress, G3721.P3 1850 .M6.
Prince Edward Island is still a generation away from having this blessing constructed. Indeed, not only were there no railways on the Island but the state of the roads was so bad that travel was most difficult. As in the days of the French Regime, boats were still the quickest and most efficient means of transporting people and goods from place to place. Fortunate were those townships that had inland riverways.
The Advent of the Telegraph
Samuel Morse, an American, developed and patented an electric telegraph in 1837. He had an assistant called Alfred Vail who found a means of recording the messages that came in by embossing the dots and dashes of the code on a ribbon of paper. The first experiments were conduced in 1838 and the system was refined in the next few years. By 1853, when this map was printed, the telegraph had spread to the Eastern United States and Canada.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_telegraph
https://www.britannica.com/technology/telegraph
1853 – Charles B. Barr, TELEGRAPH STATIONS/ in the/ UNITED STATES, / CANADAS & NOVA SCOTIA. / compiled from reliable sources/ by/ Chas. B. Barr, / Pittsburgh, Pa../. [Remarks transposed below.] Above lower border: Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1853 by Chas. B BARR in the Clerk’s Office of the Western District Court of Penna. And below border, Weigner & Buechner lith: 60 Market Str. Pittsburgh Pa. Coloured lithograph, 58 x 64 cm. Library of Congress, G3701.P92 1853. B2 TIL.
Below the title are these interesting remarks on the development and spread of telegraphy.
The first American Telegraph Line was Morse’s between Baltimore & Washington City and was established in May 1844, when an appropriation was made by Congress to test the practicable operation of the invention. There is now upwards of 17,500 miles working under the Morse patent. The aggregate number of main and branch lines in the United States at present, will number about one hundred. There is now complete and in operation 27,000 miles and 10,000 more in process of construction. The route selected for a telegraphic connection to the Pacific by the Committee on Post offices & Post Roads appointed by Congress in the session of 1851 is that surveyed by Cap. W. W. Chapman US Army. It commences at the city of Natchez Miss and extending through Texas in latitude 32˚; crossing at the head of the Gulf of California to San Diego, thence along the coast to Monterey and san Francisco, distance 2,400 miles. — The systems of Morse and House are those now used in this country. The extent of telegraphic communication completed and in operation throughout the world at the beginning of the present year, may be estimated at 40,000 miles. – Of this amount there are 4,000 miles in Great Britain and 27,000 in America. Russia has commenced her system of telegraphs between St. Petersburg, Moscow and Cracow and the ports of the Baltic & Black Seas. About 4000 miles are shortly to be constructed in India.
When we look at a close-up of Prince Edward Island on this map we see – wonder of wonders! – that the telegraph has reached Prince Edward Island. The point of entry however was not Wood Islands but the spot, below Carlton Head, where the width of the Strait was thought to be only 8.5 miles. This amazing event was not instigated by the government of Prince Edward Island but by an entrepreneur who had bigger fish to fry.
Frederick N. Gisborne was an English engineer who was fascinated with the potential of instantaneous communication, something which just a few years before had been a dream carried over from the late Eighteenth Century. Gisborne had dreams of a transatlantic underwater cable that would carry signals instantly from Europe to America. The potential of this capability was so huge that it boggled the mind that was used to waiting 3-4 weeks for messages to arrive by ship across the sea. A basic communication, with a reply, would take at least two months.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Newton_Gisborne
Gisborne wanted badly to experiment with an underwater cable and saw an ideal opportunity to do so by joining Prince Edward Island to the Mainland. In the end, using the surveys of Bayfield, the shortest distance possible for such a cable was between Carlton head and Cape Tormentine in New Brunswick.
Miraculously the project went ahead, and Gisborne moved to Charlottetown where he purchased Warblington, off North River Road, a new house in the most fashionable style of the day – Gothic Revival. Here it is painted, it is believed, by Fanny Bayfield, and now in the Confederation Centre Art Gallery.
There he waited for the undersea cable to arrive from England, and it was laid, as planned, in 1852. There is a most interesting addition to Wright’s 1852 map showing what must be the cable coming out of Northumberland Strait and reaching shore at Amherst Cove near Cape Traverse.
Here in a transcription from Waymarking.com of the commemorative plaque you can see the basic details of the project.
https://www.pc.gc.ca/apps/dfhd/page_nhs_eng.aspx?id=1325
Here is a detailed description of the PEI/NB project taken from this interesting and detailed website:
Upon his return he arranged, with new capital, the reconstitution of the NETC, which gave him exclusive rights for land cables in Newfoundland for 30 years. It was however with the stretch between New Brunswick and PEI that he succeeded in becoming the first ever to lay a submarine telegraph cable on the continent of America. For use in the laying of the cable, Gisborne bought a small paddle steamship, 81’ x 14.3’, of 3993/100 tons rigged as a two-masted schooner, from the New York & Galway Steamship Co. She had been built at Philadelphia in 1852. Gisborne renamed her Ellen Gisborne after his wife. On 18 November Ellen Gisborne arrived in Charlottetown harbour, and left again on 19 November for Cape Tormentine with the brigantine Eliza, to make the second attempt at laying the cable. Ellen Gisborne had on the previous Sunday, 11 November stuck on the reef making out from the Cape and beat over it in five feet of water. She suffered considerable damage, and Eliza lost about fifty fathoms of chain cable and two anchors. However, on 22 and 23 November 1852, the laying of the cable from Cape Tormentine, New Brunswick, to Carleton Head (now called Borden Point), Prince Edward Island, was accomplished by Gisborne’s team, as reported in the Islander newspaper on 26 November. Gisborne paid tribute there to Captain Kennedy of Charlottetown for his very valuable assistance, adding that without Captain Kennedy, the laying of the cable would have had to be postponed from the autumn. It seems likely that Captain Kennedy was in command of the brigantine Eliza which, in a small item in the Islander newspaper of 19 November 1852, is mentioned as helping in the operations.
https://atlantic-cable.com/Cables/1852PEI/index.htm
The Remainder of the Decade
Except for the intensifying tensions and violent discussions over the rent and landlord issue, and the progress that was being made as, inexorably, events moved towards an excruciating resolution, the evolution of maps of Prince Edward Island, and the region, seemed to slow down. I have not found anything significant for the last 8 years of the decade except for this pretty map of the region that tells us nothing new about what was happening on the Island.
1860 – Mitchell, Samuel Augustus (1792-1868), COUNTY MAP/ OF/ NOVA SCOTIA/ NEW BRUNSWICK/ CAPE BRETON ID./ AND/ PR. EDWARD’S ID./ (below bottom border) Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1860 by S. Augustus Mitchell Jr. in the Clerks office of the District Court of the U.S. for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Map area: 23.5 x 29 cm, PEIMHF HF.96.1.29.
A Princely Interlude – August 1860
The cartographic world may not have been generating a great deal of excitement in the last years of this decade but in 1860 an event occurred that thrilled both the Canadian colonies and the United States. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, in a major fit of anxious neuroticism about the profligate their teenage son, the Prince of Wales, was turning into, decided, after much consultation, to send him on a world tour. So, the biggest and best ships in the Royal Navy set out for America and Charlottetown was a port of call. I will tell the story of that visit in my next blog post. Henry Cundall’s heart, like so many others on the continent, went pitter patter at the prospect of seeing, even meeting, this prodigy of beauty and vice. Cundall most certainly would have met the Prince, and too shy, I am sure, to take his own picture with his very bulky equipment, bought this very posh print of the Prince, probably from the publicity entourage that dealt with such mementoes.
He pasted it into his photo album, that new medium of intimate communication, and it survives today in the Cundall Album in the Provincial Archives in Charlottetown. For an excellent, richly illustrated overview of Cundall’s Album read John Boylan’s article in Issue 73 of The Island Magazine – “Picture This: A new Perspective on Early Prince Edward Island Photography.”
Cundall’s friend, Helen Bayfield, who is also very famous for her exceptionally diverse photo album, did not have such a picture in her album, but she had a small print of a group of the Prince’s entourage in Montreal and a picture of the great triumphal arches erected on Queen Street, and probably photographed by Cundall.
Wright and Cundall appear Together.
At the beginning of the new century, and after the excitement of the Royal Visit had subsided, Henry Cundall got to work on a thorough revision of Thomas Wright’s 1852 map. It is very large – 300 cm wide – and very elegant too, with good design where the necessary tables and elements of such a map are well placed. I do not have a scan of the complete map from PARO and so have photographed my own copy of the map, not as a single sheet, but cut into 33 pieces and mounted on linen so that it could be folded and carried in your pocket.
The cartouche is very fine, topped by an engraving of Province House, or the Colonial Building as it was called at that time. Cundall, ever the gentleman, is scrupulous in respecting Wright’s work which forms the essence of the map and includes his name very modestly as the person who made the revisions.
1861 [1852] – George Wright updated by Henry Cundall, MAP of PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND,/ in the/ GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE,/ Comprising the latest Topographical information/ afforded by the Surveyor Generals Office/ and other authentic Sources./ The Sea Coast, Rivers, &c. being laid down from the Survey/ recently completed by Captain H. W. Bayfield R. N./ BY GEORGE WRIGHT ESQR./ SURVEYOR GENERAL./ 1852./Corrected up to 1861 by H. J. Cundall/ PUBLISHED UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF/ THE COLONIAL LEGISLATURE/ Charlotte Town G. T Haszard. Engraved tinted map, cut into 33 pieces, 11 x 22 cm, and glued to linen for folding. Bound in card. Image size 65.5 x 300 cm. R. Porter Collection.
Until I am able to obtain a very high-resolution photograph of the Wright Cundall map, I can only provide you with this small-scale pdf which only gives you a blurred hint of the treasures within.
1861 [1852] Wright-Cundall Map – Porter Coll.
What were the revisions that were made? New roads and minor roads were named, as well as minor settlements, and great attention is given to the Island waterways, even very small streams. The most important change of all however was the blatant insertion, in a clear font, of the names of all the landlords brought up to date, and the listing of those lots, or parts of lots, that had reverted to Crown Land. Here are the Cunard and Palmer interests in Lot 1. Cunard is now Sir Samuel and one of his sons owns part of the lot.
The growing Acadian presence in Lot 15 is carried over from the 1852 map, as is Miscouche, so close to the County Town of Saint Eleanors.
The REFERENCE table of the map clearly identifies everything you will see with international symbols – roads, buildings and the various mills. But in this map, for the first time, at the bottom of the table, the symbol for the telegraph lines has been inserted.
We are given a very clear picture of it coming to shore from Cape Tormentine and heading off towards Charlottetown via Tryon.
The telegraph continues East and in this detail of the map we see it reaching Souris.
The urban area of Charlottetown is presented in a very detailed fashion, and we can see signs of growth in the suburbs and beyond.
From urban expansion to small rural enterprise, this detail of the Flat River/Belle River and Wood Islands area where I live is characterised by the presence of saw and grist mills on portions of the Belle and Flat Rivers that are very close to their sources. Carding mills also appear because enough land is cleared to allow flocks of sheep to thrive and produce large amounts of wool that has to be converted to yarn. Wool was the main fabric of the colonial wardrobe.
The map was a triumph, and aside from the insertion of roads, railways, communities and more churches and schools, would be used as a base map into the Twentieth Century.
So much wonder, achievement and information about the evolution of Prince Edward Island is contained in this small, folded monument to Island Cartography.
RESOURCES
Bayfield, Helen, Album of Photographs, 19 x 2.5 cm, 121 pp, stitched, circa 1858-65. Bound photocopy made by Reg Porter. Property of the DuVernet family. (Album subsequently donated to the Heritage Foundation, which placed it in the Provincial Archives where it was taken apart and stored in archival paper sleeves.)
Beck, Callum Vere, The Protestant-Catholic Divide on Prince Edward Island, Canada: Its Creation, Growth and Resolution, Submitted for the Degree of PhD in Religious Studies, Open University, May.2010. Pdf courtesy The British Library through EThOS.
Beck – Protestant Catholic Divide on PEI
Boylan, John, “Picture This: A New Perspective on Early Prince Edward Island Photography,” pp. 21-33, The Island Magazine, Number 73, Spring Summer 2013, Prince Edward Island Museum and Heritage Foundation, Charlottetown, 2013.
Bumstead, J. M., Land, Settlement, and Politics on Eighteenth Century Prince Edward Island, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Kingston and Montreal, 1987.
Bumstead, J. M., The People’s Clearance: Highland Emigration to British North America 1770 – 1815, Edinburgh University Press, The University of Manitoba Press, Edinburgh, 1982.
Buote, François J. And Buote, Gilbert, L’Impartial: Numero Illustré – Souvenir de la Celebration du 100me. Anniversaire de la Fondation de Tignish, L’Impartial, Tignish, 1899.
Campey, Lucille H., Planters and Paupers: English Settlers in Atlantic Canada, A Natural Heritage Book, A Member of the Dundern Group, Toronto, 2010.
Cran, Emily Elizabeth, Success on the Edge: Portrait of a Small Town, New World Publishing, Halifax, 2000.
Douglas, R., Place Names of Prince Edward Island with Meanings, F. C. Acland, Printer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, Ottawa, 1925.
Edelson, S. Max, Colonizing St. John Island: A History in Maps, internet site: https://earlycanadianhistory.ca/2018/11/14/colonizing-st-john-island-a-history-in-maps/
Edelson, S. Max, The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America before Independence, Harvard University Press, 2017.
Greenhill, Basil, and Giffard, Ann, Westcountrymen in Prince Edward’s Isle: A Fragment of the Great Migration, David & Charles, University of Toronto Press, 1967.
Harvey, D. C. editor, Journeys to the Island of St. John or Prince Edward Island 1775-1832, The MacMillan Company of Canada Limited, Toronto, 1955.
Hornsby, Stephen J., Surveyors of Empire: Samuel Holland, J. W. F. Des Barres and the Making of the Atlantic Neptune, Carleton Library Series 221, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, 2011.
Kershaw, Kenneth A., Early Printed Maps of Canada, Vol, III – 1703-1799, First Edition, Second Impression, Alexander Books, Ancaster, Ontario, 2002.
MacDonald, Edward, “The Master of Beaconsfield – Part Two: Henry J. Cundall,” The Island Magazine, Number 34, Fall/Winter 1993, Prince Edward Island Museum and Heritage Foundation, Charlottetown, 1993.
Lockerby, Earle, “Thomas Wright and the Holland Survey,” The Island Magazine, Number 66, Fall/Winter 2009, pp. 30-38, Prince Edward Island Museum and Heritage Foundation, Charlottetown, 2009.
Lockerby, Earle and Sobey, Douglas, Samuel Holland: His Work and Legacy on Prince Edward Island, Island Studies Press, University of Prince Edward Island, Holland College, Charlottetown, 2015.
MacIntyre, Wendell, Editor, The Abegweit Review (A Scottish Issue), Fall 1995 – Spring 1996, Volume 8, No. 2, Published by the Friends of St. Andrews Press, printed by Kwik-Kopy Printing, Charlottetown, 1996.
MacMillan, Rev John C., The Early History of the Catholic Church on Prince Edward Island, Evenement Printing Company, Quebec, 1905.
Porter, Reginald, Government House and the Fanningbank Estate: A Guidebook, The Friends of the Gatehouse Cooperative, Charlottetown, 2015.
Rayburn, Alan, Geographical Names of Prince Edward Island, Surveys and Mapping Branch, Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, Ottawa, 1973.
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