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- ‘One of America’s foremost cartographers’ : Jed Hotchkiss
‘One of America’s foremost cartographers’ : Jed Hotchkiss
- By The Map Collector
- Published 1 November 1989
- Maps
- Unrated
A dozen or so years before John Brown attacked the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, and a certain Colonel Robert E. Lee regained it, two young men from the north arrived there on a canal boat. They were about to enter Virginia on a walking tour financed by the selling of maps and books as they went. One of them was Jedediah Hotchkiss, not yet nineteen, but with one year's teaching experience in a mining village in Lykens Valley in Pennsylvania. He could not have imagined the consequences of that youthful expedition, nor, as he viewed and sketched the magnificent scenery embracing the union of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers from the rocky heights of the Maryland shore could he have foreseen that his drafting skill would be used in a civil war. The idea that he would side with the slave-holding south he would have dismissed as a nightmare fantasy.
Jed was born at the end of November, 1828, in Windsor, Broome County, a village lying in the valley of the Susquehanna, a few miles to the north of the New York-Pennsylvania State line. His limited schooling was supplemented by extensive reading which stimulated an interest in the natural sciences. Of these, geology was one in which he would make a contribution of far reaching consequences to the state drained by the two rivers now before him.
In the course of this tour he met Henry Forrer, joint owner with his brother Daniel of the Shenandoah Iron Furnace property in Page County. Henry was a bachelor, but his brother, who operated a furnace at Mossy Creek in Augusta County, was a family man in need of a tutor for his children. led was offered the job; he accepted thinking only to stay for a year. His tutoring was successful, and he enjoyed the life. He was adequately paid, he liked his employer, and the job left him ample time to explore the beautiful, and geologically interesting, Shenandoah Valley. The demand for Jed's services as a teacher by Forrer's neighbours eventually caused led to canvass for the establish¬ment of Mossy Creek Academy, which, with its own boarding house, was to provide a first class education for boys from all over the State. During this time he married Sara Ann Comfort, of Lanesboro, Pennsylvania. They had two children, both girls, Ellen May (Nellie) and Anna Lydia, born respectively in 1855 and 1857. A combination of financial difficulties and the poor health of his wife following the birth of their second daughter caused him to sell his interest in the Academy and to move to Stribling Springs where for a year he ran a Select (private) School. While there, he planned another Academy and per-suaded his brother Nelson to join him. In 1859 the brothers bought a 300 acre farm on the outskirts of Churchville, where they established Loch Willow School. Before the end of the second academic year the school closed and Jed rode off to war, offering his services as a mapmaker to General Garnet.
For twelve years Hotchkiss had been a teacher. As far as can be told from the record, this was the career he chose for himself, enjoyed, and was dedicated to. Surveying and mapmaking were just part of the school curriculum; necessary for a proper understanding of geography, valuable as a practical exercise in trigonometry, essential in an agricultural economy practised in a land still only partly explored and even less mapped. There is nothing in his pre-war record to prepare us for either the quality or the quantity of the cartographic output to come. True, there are sketch maps in his diaries, and references to surveying; he drew a pi at (plan) of Mr Forrer's meadow, and of the land purchased for the boarding house of Mossy Creek Academy, but these were nothing more than one would expect of a school¬master of the time. There is evidence of drawing skill in his diary sketches, and in the few flower paintings surviving from his youth, but nothing to foretell the artistry of his work as a topographical engineer. [11]
His first few months of active service in the mountains of western Virginia were disastrous. He was involved in the retreat from Rich Mountain, where, barely escaping capture, he lost all his surveying equipment as well as the notes of the triangulation he had just completed. [n July, 1860, he was at Valley Mountain at the head of Tygart's Valley on topographical duties for Generals Lee and Loring. Here he caught typhoid fever and had to return home, but not before he had completed a map of Tygart's Valley with the help of loseph Conrad, a local magistrate and surveyor. While on sick leave he wrote a report on the Rich Mountain affair, and drew a fair copy of his Tygart's Valley map. This, now in the Alderman Library, is almost certainly the first of led's war-time maps to have survived.
When compared with his later maps it has a certain 'stiffness' conferred by the form lines depicting the ridges enclosing the valley. On the other hand it is unmistakedly Hotchkiss; from a school master, 'Professor' Hotchkiss had become, if not over¬night, then within a few months, a topographical engineer to be compared favourably with his professionally trained colleagues.
Following convalescence, Hotchkiss joined General Thomas ("Stonewall") laekson in March, 1862, immediately after the battle of Kernstown, and received the famous order to 'Make me a map of the Valley ... [12] One of the products of this instruction is item 89 of the Hotchkiss Map Collection in the Library of Congress; a map of the Shenandoah Valley 100 x 44 inches at a scale of 1 :80,000 drawn on tracing linen in red for roads, blue for drainage, with land form and lettering in black. The relief is depicted mainly by form lines, which adequately convey the topography in areas familiar to Hotchkiss, but deteriorate into symbolism elsewhere. There is limited use of hachures. Churches and mills are shown by symbols, and there is extensive naming of occupiers of the dwellings marked on the map. It was drawn on three pieces of tracing linen which were glued together to form a continuous sheet. On this long strip led drew the ¾ inch N-S, E- W grid oriented so that northeast was at the top of the map, thus allowing him to get practically the whole of the Valley within the width of tracing linen at his disposal. The grid was first drawn in pencil, but was ruled over in ink some time after the map was finished. There was certainly more than one copy of this map, and many other maps of portions of the Valley were derived from this, or one of its copies. [13]
This sketch of the Battle of Rutherfords Farm, one of fifty-nine sketches prepared to accompany his report on General Jubal Early's Valley Campaign of 1864, is typical of those drawn by the Hotchkiss team at the end of the war.
(By courtesy of the Library of Congress)
Although led made a number of reconnaissance trips shortly after receiving his orders from lackson, it was not until the General left the Valley to help in the defence of the Confederate capital that he was able to make a start 0n the map. It was probably available for use by the late summer of 1862, but it was continually revised and added to throughout the War. Only five days before Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Jed recorded in his diary, 'I corrected Valley map some. [14]
Perhaps of greater historic interest, and a map described by Mrs LeGear as 'One of the finest maps in the collection', is one that he made in the early part of 1863 when Jackson's Corps was in winter quarters at Moss Neck on the Rappahannock cast of Fredericksburg. On February 23rd he 'got secret orders from the General to prepare a map of the Valley of Va. extended to Harrisburg, Pa., and then on to Philadelphia, wishing the preparation to be kept a profound secret'. The second invasion of the North was being planned, onc which would end at Gettysburg. This map is onc of the three given by Mrs Christian to The Handley Library, but is represented in the Library of Congress collection by a photostat copy. The original was drawn on a sheet 132 x 81cms (52 x 32 inches), at half the scale of the Valley map, though no scale nor the conventional orientation is depicted. The map is very finely drawn, roads, rivers and lettering arc shown as in the Valley map, but relief is by hachures. Again, the names of many householders are given. [15]
This is only onc of many maps made by Hotchkiss during that winter at Moss Neck when General Jackson and other senior officers were writing their reports of the campaigns of 1862. Because Jackson was meticulous in the preparation of these, Jed participated in the many conferences called to determine the location of divisions, brigades, or other formations on the battlefields. Consequently he was as well informed about the conduct of the campaigns as anyone, and far better than most. [t was this knowledge which made him so much in demand after the war as a lecturer, and as a source of information for those writing their memoirs. He was indispensable to historians of the War in Virginia.
Jed was born at the end of November, 1828, in Windsor, Broome County, a village lying in the valley of the Susquehanna, a few miles to the north of the New York-Pennsylvania State line. His limited schooling was supplemented by extensive reading which stimulated an interest in the natural sciences. Of these, geology was one in which he would make a contribution of far reaching consequences to the state drained by the two rivers now before him.
In the course of this tour he met Henry Forrer, joint owner with his brother Daniel of the Shenandoah Iron Furnace property in Page County. Henry was a bachelor, but his brother, who operated a furnace at Mossy Creek in Augusta County, was a family man in need of a tutor for his children. led was offered the job; he accepted thinking only to stay for a year. His tutoring was successful, and he enjoyed the life. He was adequately paid, he liked his employer, and the job left him ample time to explore the beautiful, and geologically interesting, Shenandoah Valley. The demand for Jed's services as a teacher by Forrer's neighbours eventually caused led to canvass for the establish¬ment of Mossy Creek Academy, which, with its own boarding house, was to provide a first class education for boys from all over the State. During this time he married Sara Ann Comfort, of Lanesboro, Pennsylvania. They had two children, both girls, Ellen May (Nellie) and Anna Lydia, born respectively in 1855 and 1857. A combination of financial difficulties and the poor health of his wife following the birth of their second daughter caused him to sell his interest in the Academy and to move to Stribling Springs where for a year he ran a Select (private) School. While there, he planned another Academy and per-suaded his brother Nelson to join him. In 1859 the brothers bought a 300 acre farm on the outskirts of Churchville, where they established Loch Willow School. Before the end of the second academic year the school closed and Jed rode off to war, offering his services as a mapmaker to General Garnet.
For twelve years Hotchkiss had been a teacher. As far as can be told from the record, this was the career he chose for himself, enjoyed, and was dedicated to. Surveying and mapmaking were just part of the school curriculum; necessary for a proper understanding of geography, valuable as a practical exercise in trigonometry, essential in an agricultural economy practised in a land still only partly explored and even less mapped. There is nothing in his pre-war record to prepare us for either the quality or the quantity of the cartographic output to come. True, there are sketch maps in his diaries, and references to surveying; he drew a pi at (plan) of Mr Forrer's meadow, and of the land purchased for the boarding house of Mossy Creek Academy, but these were nothing more than one would expect of a school¬master of the time. There is evidence of drawing skill in his diary sketches, and in the few flower paintings surviving from his youth, but nothing to foretell the artistry of his work as a topographical engineer. [11]
His first few months of active service in the mountains of western Virginia were disastrous. He was involved in the retreat from Rich Mountain, where, barely escaping capture, he lost all his surveying equipment as well as the notes of the triangulation he had just completed. [n July, 1860, he was at Valley Mountain at the head of Tygart's Valley on topographical duties for Generals Lee and Loring. Here he caught typhoid fever and had to return home, but not before he had completed a map of Tygart's Valley with the help of loseph Conrad, a local magistrate and surveyor. While on sick leave he wrote a report on the Rich Mountain affair, and drew a fair copy of his Tygart's Valley map. This, now in the Alderman Library, is almost certainly the first of led's war-time maps to have survived.
When compared with his later maps it has a certain 'stiffness' conferred by the form lines depicting the ridges enclosing the valley. On the other hand it is unmistakedly Hotchkiss; from a school master, 'Professor' Hotchkiss had become, if not over¬night, then within a few months, a topographical engineer to be compared favourably with his professionally trained colleagues.
Following convalescence, Hotchkiss joined General Thomas ("Stonewall") laekson in March, 1862, immediately after the battle of Kernstown, and received the famous order to 'Make me a map of the Valley ... [12] One of the products of this instruction is item 89 of the Hotchkiss Map Collection in the Library of Congress; a map of the Shenandoah Valley 100 x 44 inches at a scale of 1 :80,000 drawn on tracing linen in red for roads, blue for drainage, with land form and lettering in black. The relief is depicted mainly by form lines, which adequately convey the topography in areas familiar to Hotchkiss, but deteriorate into symbolism elsewhere. There is limited use of hachures. Churches and mills are shown by symbols, and there is extensive naming of occupiers of the dwellings marked on the map. It was drawn on three pieces of tracing linen which were glued together to form a continuous sheet. On this long strip led drew the ¾ inch N-S, E- W grid oriented so that northeast was at the top of the map, thus allowing him to get practically the whole of the Valley within the width of tracing linen at his disposal. The grid was first drawn in pencil, but was ruled over in ink some time after the map was finished. There was certainly more than one copy of this map, and many other maps of portions of the Valley were derived from this, or one of its copies. [13]
This sketch of the Battle of Rutherfords Farm, one of fifty-nine sketches prepared to accompany his report on General Jubal Early's Valley Campaign of 1864, is typical of those drawn by the Hotchkiss team at the end of the war.
(By courtesy of the Library of Congress)
Although led made a number of reconnaissance trips shortly after receiving his orders from lackson, it was not until the General left the Valley to help in the defence of the Confederate capital that he was able to make a start 0n the map. It was probably available for use by the late summer of 1862, but it was continually revised and added to throughout the War. Only five days before Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Jed recorded in his diary, 'I corrected Valley map some. [14]
Perhaps of greater historic interest, and a map described by Mrs LeGear as 'One of the finest maps in the collection', is one that he made in the early part of 1863 when Jackson's Corps was in winter quarters at Moss Neck on the Rappahannock cast of Fredericksburg. On February 23rd he 'got secret orders from the General to prepare a map of the Valley of Va. extended to Harrisburg, Pa., and then on to Philadelphia, wishing the preparation to be kept a profound secret'. The second invasion of the North was being planned, onc which would end at Gettysburg. This map is onc of the three given by Mrs Christian to The Handley Library, but is represented in the Library of Congress collection by a photostat copy. The original was drawn on a sheet 132 x 81cms (52 x 32 inches), at half the scale of the Valley map, though no scale nor the conventional orientation is depicted. The map is very finely drawn, roads, rivers and lettering arc shown as in the Valley map, but relief is by hachures. Again, the names of many householders are given. [15]
This is only onc of many maps made by Hotchkiss during that winter at Moss Neck when General Jackson and other senior officers were writing their reports of the campaigns of 1862. Because Jackson was meticulous in the preparation of these, Jed participated in the many conferences called to determine the location of divisions, brigades, or other formations on the battlefields. Consequently he was as well informed about the conduct of the campaigns as anyone, and far better than most. [t was this knowledge which made him so much in demand after the war as a lecturer, and as a source of information for those writing their memoirs. He was indispensable to historians of the War in Virginia.
