Map of Texas

Creator

• John Arrowsmith

Preview

Identifier

20112689

Description

John Arrowsmith’s 1841 map of Texas was one of the first maps to show the new republic’s most ambitious boundaries. These included the lower Rio Grande and not the Nueces River as the southern boundary with Mexico, the upper Rio Grande as the border with Mexican New Mexico, and the “stovepipe” panhandle stretching into what is now Colorado and New Mexico. This map appeared in Arrowsmith’s London Atlas of Universal Geography first published in 1841 but other variants were included in his later atlases as well as in William Kennedy’s popular travel and guide book Texas: The Rise, Progress and Prospects of the Republic of Texas, also published in 1841. Arrowsmith based his map upon a variety of sources from the republic’s General Land Office, maps of competitors, travel accounts, and others. It includes the republic’s original twentythree counties plus additional counties formed up to 1839. Among the latter is a huge Robertson County, named for former empresario and pioneer Sterling Clack Robertson (1785-1842) whose right of claim to settle families in the area had led to a dispute with Stephen F. Austin and his partner Samuel May Williams. Arrowsmith’s map was widely copied, notably the quote written across the Llano Estacado area of the panhandle that “This tract of Country explored by Le Grand in 1833 is naturally fertile well wooded & with a fair proportion of water” – a reference to Santa Fe trader Alexander Le Grand (ca.1794-1839) who purportedly surveyed the Wilson-Exter empresario grant before Texas became a republic. [Gift of Virginia Garrett]

Archival Date

1841

Location

135/3

Collection Name

Cartographic Connections

Collection Number

00574

Publisher

University of Texas at Arlington Libraries

Original Format

Map

File Format

JPG

Rights

Any use of content downloaded or printed from this site is limited to non-commercial personal or educational use, including fair use as directed by U.S. copyright laws. For more information or for reproduction requests, please contact Special Collections

Subjects

Texas; Mexico; United states

Item Type

image