What’s Mapped Is Mine
Maps are beautiful artifacts that exercise a sometimes sinister impact on land holding. According to an old map, my house in Cornwall Bridge stands in Waramaug’s Tract, a reminder that indigenous inhabitants long occupied this area of Western Connecticut before what are often termed the pioneering days of early colonial settlement. Maps made by courts and settlers imposed a logical framework, boundaries and an ideological interpretation of ownership upon what was once an arena for collective sustenance. Simon Winchester has brilliantly critiqued these assumptions in Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World. He opens by exploring Schaghticoke tribal lands and the history of ownership along the Kent section of the Housatonic River.
“Map Stories” a new exhibition at the Cornwall Historical Society curated by Suzanne Fateh, features a wonderful old map by a town clerk/surveyor/judge who reconstructed the colonial division of lands from 1738. The George C. Harrison Map of 1896 explodes many myths about the golden past. From the outset, land lots and rights were traded, gobbled up and subject to speculation. Inequality, ambition and greed permeate the lot lines Harrison so painfully inscribed on his map which was over 40 years in the making. Odd features of town development emerge in the course of creating the map: like many Western towns, Cornwall included a section, in this case 300 acres owned by Yale in the southeastern corner of the town, to endow the college with resources and ensure the fiscal stability of Connecticut’s first theology school.
In Connecticut Colony, settlements along the major rivers and Long Island Sound occurred first. But the “sale of the Northwestern Townships launched in 1737 and 1738 opened the last phase of the Colony’s settlement.” according to Michael R. Gannett (The Distribution of the Common Land of Cornwall, Connecticut, 1783–1887.) Proprietary rights were sold at auction to bidders who were both British subjects and Connecticut residents. Notice immediately how this provision simply writes the original inhabitants out of the picture (Native Americans were not accorded the rights of British subjects). Ministers were provided for in the initial property distributions, including a parsonage right and a gospel minister right. Another public right supported the school. There were 53 rights to property in Cornwall which could be divided into individual plots of land to be sold or transferred. Originally there were also common lands but over time the proprietors voted themselves most of the common portions, divided equally by right.
The CHS displays a wonderful artifact called a “waywiser” which is a sort of wheelbarrow with a distance measuring device on it, used by Harrison in his endeavors. Measuring boundaries imposes a grid of categories over the raw land which leave out geographical features which may be the most important aspect of a piece of land. Property lines tell you nothing about steepness, ravines, tree stands, brooks, and fields strewn with glacial erratics so enormous that even a team of oxen can’t budge them. So, it’s useful to compare the Harrison map with other Cornwall maps such as a stacked 3d rendering made of slices of cardboard, whose edges represent contour lines of elevation. Likewise, a green spaces map provides a fascinating counterpoint to the original prospect of those “undivided” western lands in 1737. A bridge toll sign showing a six cent fare for a loaded sleigh v. eight cents for a pleasure sleigh but only one penny for a horse or cow reminds us that geographical “obstacles” like the Housatonic River may spur specific forms of commerce.
An intriguing feature of Cornwall’s land arrangements are the two large land associations. Dark Entry Forest, begun with 300 acres but now around 3,000 acres, was founded in the 1924 by a group of “silvaculturists” (eg early tree huggers), and stated its mission as: This society is planned to promote forestation, to run a wood mill, to promote conservation of bird, animal and wildflower life, and to afford a playground for you and your children and your children’s children. ~ Prospectus, Dark Entry Forest, March 1924 (Cornwall Historical Society). Indeed, the early Dark Entry Forest members aided by Yale Forestry school experts planted thousands of trees on scrub- covered former farm fields. Like other farming communities in the early colonies, Connecticut farmers wore out the rocky soil and their patience with the weather, and moved west as more tillable land became available. Another land association with a more literary and social mission, Yelping Hill, turns 100 this year. It began in 1921 with six families and about 100 acres which has grown to around 375 acres now.
As nearly everyone these days navigates with eyes glued to their smartphone, it is a pleasure to explore these representations that orient us with a compass rose and invite deep study to parse the fine details. Map Stories runs from July 1, 2021 to October 16, 2021, open on Saturdays on Pine St. in Cornwall, CT. On Sep. 12, geographer Dr. Kristen Keegan will give a talk about maps, geography and history, interpreting some of the artifacts on display.