On this day in 1862, Confederate general Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson delivered a famous order to his topographical engineer, Jedediah Hotchkiss: I want you to make me a map of the Valley, from Harpers Ferry to Lexington, showing all the points of offense and defence in those places. As famous orders go, it’s not exactly “Don’t fire until [...]

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From BigThink.com: The real reason why this particular iconic representation of America’s national bird never caught on, is in the tailfeathers – shaped to follow a border no longer in existence by 1848. The western borders of the subsequent independent and later US state of Texas are recognisable, for now as the dividing line between the US [...]

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A guest post by Peter Hedlund, Encyclopedia Virginia Programmer One of the goals at Encyclopedia Virginia is to create intuitive and interesting ways for users to find content on our site. With this end in mind, we redesigned our site last summer. But one aspect of the original site persisted: the Explore Virginia map. Still, we found [...]

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“Look, whatever you do, do not mess with the Spanish.” This, more or less, was how King James put it to Sir Walter Raleigh late in 1617 when he granted the overstuffed old courtier permission to try again to plant a colony on the north coast of South America. And Raleigh certainly must have nodded his head because what else was [...]

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On this day 150 years ago, Union and Confederate armies fought at Fredericksburg in what was perhaps the Confederacy’s most lopsided victory of the Civil War. You might recall—it’s been nearly a month—poor old Ambrose Burnside, the Army of the Potomac‘s new commander, stuck on the wrong side of the Rappahannock because of a bureaucratic screw-up. (No [...]

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The above screen shot is of a Google Maps OpenStreetMap application, created by the website Bomb Sight, that locates every German bomb dropped during the London Blitz (October 7, 1940–June 6, 1941). The creators used World War II bomb census maps previously available only in the Reading Room of the National Archives in London. Now [...]

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From the Library of Congress, via the Virginia Historical Society, comes this map by Robert Knox Sneden of a skirmish in South Carolina on December 9, 1864: This map … shows the skirmish between Confederate forces protecting the railroad and Union forces (the 127th New York Regiment under Gen. E. E. Potter) hoping to secure [...]

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Called the John Smith map of Virginia, this gorgeous engraving was actually completed by William Hole based on information provided by John Smith and then published first in 1612 and then again in Smith’s book The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (1624). The particular edition shown above was hand-colored in Frankfurt in [...]

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From the National Archives: This map shows the proposed Pacific Telegraph from San Francisco to Moscow. It was submitted to the Committee on Commerce with a petition for a survey for a telegraphic line from the Amoor River to “Russian America” (Alaska), ca. 1862.

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The above map, published in July 1863 and certainly one of the first to show West Virginia as a separate state, is beautiful all by itself, but Harvard Law School Library ups the cool factor even more. It has a fragment of a copy that once belonged to Oliver Wendell Holmes, who owned the map [...]

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George Washington‘s birthplace Birthplace National Monument via Google Street View.

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From Virginia: A History of the People by John Esten Cooke (1911); and Virginia: A History of the People by John Esten Cooke (1888) This is one in a series of posts that pays homage to The Art of Google Books.

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From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, this Map of the western parts of the colony of Virginia, as far as the Mississip[p]i, was created by George Washington in 1754. Virginia’s borders are colored orange, and Washington’s route from Williamsburg to French Fort is also marked.

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This interactive battles and casualties map of the Civil War was created by the Washington Post. That’s a screen shot above; you’ll have to go to the site to play with it. The Post explains its features: Press the play button below to watch the war unfold over time. Drag the scrubber or click on the [...]

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Die Neuwen Inseln, So Hinder Hispanien Gegen Orient Bey Dem Land India Ligen (The New Islands Lie Beyond Spain Towards the Orient near India) by Sebastian Münster (1489–1552), ca. 1550 (Library of Congress) Here’s some context: Münster’s map of the western hemisphere is the first printed map to show North and South America as completely separate from [...]

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Speaking, as we were, of the Peninsula Campaign and the difficulty of commemorating it, I offer up this lovely map of Harrison’s Landing, on the James River, by Robert Knox Sneden. It shows the locations of the camps of the Army of the Potomac during the Seven Days’ Battles, June 25–July 1, 1862. (Library of [...]

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Actually, rather than ask Jim Horn what happened to the Lost Colonists of Roanoke, we should ask Neil Gaiman. In Marvel 1602, his series published in 2003–2004, he posits that Virginia Dare made it back to England: Meanwhile, the ship Virginia Maid arrives in England from the New World, carrying the young Virginia Dare, the first child born in Roanoke [...]

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Experts from the First Colony Foundation (they study the Roanoke colonies) and the British Museum in London (they own John White‘s drawings and maps, like the one above) issued a statement on Thursday. They believe that some hitherto ignored lines on White’s map of the Carolina Sounds actually represent the symbol for a fort and, perhaps, [...]

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Appomattox Court House, Spring by William Blake (Appomattox Court House National Historical Park)   Appomattox Court House, Va., date and creator unknown (Library of Congress)   This hand-drawn map shows Appomattox Court House and vicinity, along with troop positions, at the time of Robert E. Lee‘s surrender on April 9, 1865. The Library of Congress [...]

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In an earlier post, the folks at the David Rumsey Map Collection showed off a selection of maps as time lines. So let’s riff on that theme—maps as symbols of things besides just space. Take the (gorgeous) topmost map, for instance. It shows the city of Tenochtitlán before it was conquered by Hernán Cortés and [...]

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The above are samples of maps as time lines posted recently by the David Rumsey Map Collection. The text below comes directly from the post. TOP (detail): Sebastian Adams’ 1881 Synchronological Chart of Universal History is 23 feet long and shows 5,885 years of history, from 4004 B.C. to 1881 A.D. It is the longest [...]

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In a Washington Post article from November, Rob Pegoraro investigates the burgeoning world of “augmented reality”–a concept that makes your mobile phone (as of right now it has to be phone working on the Android or iPhone platforms) into a tool that uncovers layers of information in the world around you. Let’s take this faux [...]

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In his recent military history, John Keegan writes, “The American Civil War is one of the most mysterious great wars of history . . .” We’re never done exploring that mystery, especially in these sesquicentennial years, and now the Library of Virginia offers a new and useful research tool: the Civil War Research Guide. The [...]

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