Surprise! Women have long been under-represented in cartography. Oh, we were there, doing the work, as the following links show – from nuns to native American tribes, from England to Russia to California; but more often than not, women’s contributions have traditionally been dismissed (usually as “the wife of cartographer XYZ, who helped him a bit around the edges”) or completely overlooked. Fortunately, not everyone sees history through an exclusionist lens.
One good overall roundup I’ve found is “The Women Who Shaped The World,” over on Future Maps. The article points out The Nuns at Ebstorf, creators of the Ebstorf Map – which is a lot more than just a geographical record: it’s practically a writer’s dream reference on how to create meaningful maps in a fantasy setting. Theology, history, and geography, all in one lavishly illustrated document. This is the kind of map that would be a great target for treasure hunting a few centuries later, not to mention any researchers you might have wandering about would be on something like this like a shot. It could be a window into another culture or species; heck, I could see this being useful in a science fiction setting for the same reasons.
You can find out more about the Ebstorf Map here: “Unlocking Medieval Cartography and its Hidden Meanings”, over on The Cartographic Institute.
That’s just one of the entries on that roundup, and it’s a lovely subject for a deep dive all on its own. But me being me, I’m going to offer up two more:
The list in “Female Mapmakers Making History” has a name the first one missed: Mary Ann Rocque. Unfortunately, the text here is the same as on another site, so one of them scraped it. (And her name is misspelled, too, as Roque.) As a result, I’m not going to link to either of those sites. Instead, I’ll direct you to “Biography: John Rocque” which, while it only makes a passing mention of his wife, does have a really good detail on just how many people could be employed by a successful cartography business, as well as the politics and operational considerations involved. One set of maps, “A Set of Plans and Forts in America, 1765“, can be found over on the Massachusetts History site. Thirty plans of various forts … fantasy writers, forward! Don’t stampede, mind the step….
Third and last on my list for today is “Women as Mapmakers” The name that caught me here was Eliza Colles, in part because finding information on her was difficult. Beyond brief mentions of her as “daughter” and “first female engraver”, articles are scarce. One that looked promising, “Eliza Colles, America’s First Female Map Engraver” by W Ristow, printed in The Map Collector, 1980, is going to be almost impossible to find, given that The Map Collector magazine ran from 1977-1996, print copies are rare, and it does not appear to be digitized at this time. Some print copies of the set look to be available through Abe Books. The most likely volume to hold the 1980 article, “Map Collectors’ Circle. Nos. 1-110 complete”, is listed at over $1,000 at this point, so anyone who wants to read that particular article might have to shell out a bit of change. I’ll pass, myself, but Eliza Colles is on my list for further research via various academic sites I have access to, thanks to being in college (and that anyone with a public library card could probably access as well). I’ll post what I find, if I find anything, another time.
OK, since Eliza Colles was a bit of a dead end, here’s one more. It’s an academic article, but public access: “‘Girls, Girls, Everywhere You Look, Nothing but Girls!’ Women, Maps and Mapping” by
Elizabeth Baigent, which talks about the historical complexity of the erasure of woman from cartography, including how that happens; there are more paths to that invisibility than men being credited for women’s work, and it’s far from a mists-of-time, past history issue. More names are dropped for the reader to hunt down: Canadian explorer Mina Benson Hubbard, mountaineer Fanny Bullock Workman, GIS specialist Michelle Jennings, among others. “Girls, Girls” is an excellent, thoroughly researched article. I strongly suggest anyone interested in the intersection of feminist theory, history, and mapmaking take the time to read this one.
And that’s the roundup for this post! As always, I hope you found something useful.
As a side note, on a more personal level. I’ve completely left Facebook at this point, deleted the account and everything. So the remaining follow options are: Mastodon (@lionesslady@mindly.social), my blog posts, and my newsletter. I’m already feeling much happier from the change!
Now go forth and have a lovely day, wonderful people!