Nineteenth century map meets 21st century technology

 

Library makes 146-year-old map available online

 

By David Wallace

C & G Staff Writer

     The cartographers who created an 1859 map of Macomb and St. Clair counties surely never expected that nearly a century and a half later, people would still look upon the map and could do so from anywhere in the world.

     Clinton Township residents Robert and Elizabeth Schwinke donated the map to the Clinton-Macomb Public Library, which, through an elaborate process, brought the map to the Internet Oct. 11.

     “For purposes of best preserving the map, we felt it best not to hang it and put it on the wall,” said Don Green, one of the library’s trustees and the man for whom the library’s local history room is named. To make the map available to everyone, the volunteer Friends of the Clinton-Macomb Public Library funded the map’s transition from paper and linen to zeros and ones.

     “We were fortunate enough to have them purchase a large-format scanner for 11 x 17 scanning,” said interim Library Director Larry Neal. “So four of us unrolled the map and created 28 different scans of the map in pieces. When we were at the Michigan Library Association Conference in Traverse City last fall, Don (Green) found a vendor named Jim McCammon, who had developed a very specialized process for taking high-resolution digital images and meshing them together in a single image.

     “And unlike your typical photo — when you enlarge it, you lose detail and it becomes grainy — his process allows you to see the very, very fine detail at a large level,” said Neal.

     The library put a fairly large image of the complete map on its Web site, but also went a step farther and divided the map digitally into each township. The individual township scans allow one to see the greatest amount of detail.

     By clicking on the township that contains one’s present-day home, one can see who owned the land 146 years ago. A cadastral map, it labels individual properties with the owners’ names.

     “You can find a lot of fascinating things,” said Green. He noted the cities of Frederick and Marcellus in Clinton Township, which long ago died out. And Michigan had toll roads; in Clinton Township, one can see “Toll H.” — tollhouse — labeled on Cass Avenue just east of the railroad tracks and on Gratiot Avenue just north of the Clinton River.

     Present-day Fraser began as part of Erin Township. Looking where Utica Road crossed the railroad tracks, the map identifies a plot of land belonging to A.J. Frazer, doubtless referencing Alexander J. Frazer, the city’s namesake. He would have owned that land for only about a year according to the city’s history available on its Web site.

     Entrepreneurs began making maps to make money, Green said, both by selling the maps and selling space on the maps to people. In a sense, wall maps in the 1850s were a sort of Yellow Pages before phones were invented.

     The map was made in Philadelphia, a center for mapmaking. The mapmakers took surveyors’ drawings and ascribed all the detail on limestone in wax, Green said, then wetted the stone before adding ink. The ink would adhere to the wax used to draw the map, but not to the wetted parts of the stone. Then, the mapmakers would make an impression on a piece of paper to make the map.

     “You have to know that somebody, some men, were working with just fine pinpoints on wax and putting this on limestone, blocks of limestone. All those fine lines — it’s amazing,” said Green.

     The rest of the map was hand-colored, Green said. The original map shows that it was made in four sections and spliced together before being placed on linen. The map was then shellacked.

     How the Schwinke family came to have the map is unknown.

     “I remember as a child, it was always up in my mother’s attic, but I don’t know how it got there,” said Elizabeth Schwinke. “My grandfather was a mailman and whether he used it … I have no idea.”

     Elizabeth and Robert Schwinke kept it in their basement before deciding to give it to the library.

     “It’s just amazing what they have done with it,” said Elizabeth Schwinke. “I’m glad we did that.”

     The map is available online at www.cmpl.org/Library/Digital Archive.htm.

     You can reach David Wallace at dwallace@candgnews.com