Going to Texas: Five Centuries of Texas Maps

A Map of the West-Indies, 1715

An exhibit now on display at the Old Jail Art Center in Albany, TX titled Going to Texas: Five Centuries of Texas Maps, is part of a two and a half year celebration of Texas exploration and development that began in 2007.  The exhibit moves to its last stop, the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, Fort Worth, in April 2010.

Sixty four maps from the Yana and Marty David collection illuminate Texas history over a 460 year period, from 1548 to the present time. One of the maps in the collection and part of the display is Herman Moll’s A Map of the West-Indies, published in 1715. Moll was a cartographer and publisher who worked in England. His map of the West-Indies was dedicated to William Paterson Esq., a Scotsman who was one of the founding directors of the Bank of England. Paterson was also an investor in the failed Scottish settlement in Panama called “Darien”, which Moll illustrates in the West-Indies map, along with other, better established port cities such as Cartagena and St. Augustine. There’s also an inset plan-view of “The City of Mexico in New Spain” (Mexico City) that includes a legend listing important buildings and sites.

The map is particularly interesting as a historical record of the discovery of the New World:  Moll noted the route taken by Christopher Columbus and sites where he landed, and included information about navigable waters and harbors, shoals, shipping and trading routes, and identified hundreds of place names. What is now Texas is still listed as part of “Louisiana” and west Texas is merely identified as a “country full of Beevs” (beavers). The name Texas does not appear in the map; in fact, it wasn’t until 1718, three years after the publication of Moll’s West-Indies map, that Guillaume Delisle published his famous “Louisane” map of North America and used, for the first time, Texas as a place name.

Still, Moll’s map illustrates that what is now Texas is a significant part of the Gulf of Mexico region and the entire Caribbean. The level of detail is especially valuable for anyone interested in colonial and Native American settlements, early exploration and discovery in the Americas. 

A facsimile of Moll’s map is sold by Historic Urban Plans, Inc. at its website www.historicurbanplans.com