New Sweden

New Sweden was the first European colony in the Delaware Valley, established in 1638. It was a short lived colony meant to be Sweden's answer to the New Netherland colony (now New York). 

via Wikipedia

 "Nya Sverige" or "Niew Sweden" was originally proposed by Peter Minuit, a native of Germany who had served as director of New Netherland. The Swedish government was eager to promote itself as a great power and approved the creation of the colony. They set up a trade relationship with the native Lenape peoples of the area and built Fort Christina, named for the Swedish Queen at the mouth of the Christina River, where Wilmington, Delaware is now located. 

via Wikipedia

 The colony only lasted a couple of decades before the Dutch took over the area. More on this colony can be found in the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia.

The above map is from the New York Public Library - here is a detail or the river's mouth, rotated to better fit the page.

I found one more interesting and colorful map in this video but have not been able to find it elsewhere online.

 

America's Garden Capital

 I have more way more items to post for Philadelphia month than there are weeks left so in the next few weeks I will be doing some extra postings, and a few minor notes thrown in like this one.

Did you know that Philadelphia is America’s Garden Capital? A bit of local boosterism perhaps but the claim is based on having “38 public gardens arboreta and historic landscapes within 30 miles”. On a visit to the Morris Arboretum, I saw that they were giving out passports that you can stamp. 

The passport has a map. It’s not much and certainly not good for navigation but at least gives a sense of the lay of the land.

Lenapehoking-The Delaware Watershed

A more modern take on last week's Coaquannock map, Lenapehoking is a map of the Delaware Watershed's natural environment. The title means land of the Lenape people.

The map was created by Illustrator Meg Lemieur and is available on Etsy. The map is beautifully illustrated with various animals and includes a species list in the upper left corner. This includes a list of traditional Lenape uses for plants.

There is a map of the current and historic waterways of Philadelphia in the bottom right corner. There will be more on these historic waterways in a future "Philadelphia month" post.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the text at the bottom of the map for perspective

"The Delaware River, or Lenapewihittuk in the Lenape language is the lifeblood of the Mid-Atlantic, supplying drinking water and habitats for millions of humans, animals, and vegetation."

"The relationship that the Lenni-Lenape have with the land started over 10,000 years ago and will continue far into the future.

The Coaquannock Map

I will begin Philadelphia month at an early stage, just before European settlement.

via Historical Society of Pennsylvania

This 1934 map showing the homeland of the Lenape people when the first white settlers arrived in Philadelphia, was funded by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) . The full title is Philadelphia Region when known as Coaquannock "Grove of Tall Pines" and As First Seen by the White Men. 

 Here is a detail showing the villages of Coaquannock and Shackamaxon (still a street name having inpired this wonderful song), just north of center city. These are two of the four circular villages of the Turtle Clan, as described in this blog post.

The text on the map provides some place name translations such as Kingsessing (place of large shells) and Wingohocking (a favorite spot for planting) and, of course Manayunk (where we go to drink). There are also now buried creeks with name translations such as "where we were robbed".

This map is listed on the Temple University digital collections as "Map of Philadelphia at the time of the arrival of the first Swedes" and was originally published in the Philadelphia Bulletin, an evening newspaper that died in my youth. If you want to dig into the individual neighborhoods and see what remains, take a look at this post from Philly Trees. 

Heat Islands of Philadelphia

Program Note: This month is Philadelphia month! Don't get too excited.  In the past I've done San Francisco Week and New Jersey Week. Much of that content was posted to Twitter. These things happen when I suddenly find a trove of information about a specific place. In this case I was doing some family geo-history studies (most of which took place in Philadelphia) and came across a bunch of unrelated but interesting maps. 

Since I have more to post than there are weeks in September, I will do a few off-day micro-posts. These are the kinds of things I used to put on Twitter back when that platform was still worth engaging with. Now you can see them here, and possibly on Mastodon. Being a hot week, I will start with a map of the hottest places in the city. As with so many other cities, these are also some of the lowest income and most poorly served, with few trees and parks.

This is from the Philadelphia Inquirer, though I've lost the original map link.
 

The New Acadian Heritage Room

 On my recent trip to Nova Scotia, I stumbled upon the grand opening of the New Acadian Heritage Room at the O’Dell House Museum in Annapolis Royal. I had not known anything about it, but was in the right place on the right day. The room is primarily a collection of maps from the Acadian period between 1686 and 1755. 

There are only about 9 maps but they are beautifully illustrated and highly detailed. Above is a photo I took from the earliest map of the French houses of Port Royal (renamed Annapolis Royal by the British for Queen Anne) and “where a considerable town can be made”. This “very exact” map is at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France (BNF) and can be seen completely online here.

Above is a detail of the fort and town from the “Plan de la riviere du Dauphin et du fort du Port Royal a l'Acadie en 1710”. Like the town, the Dauphin River was (I assume) renamed the Annapolis River when the British took control of the area. This map is also available from the BNF and can be seen here. It is worth a look to see the detailed close ups of the fort and river mouth as well as a linear depiction of the entire lower course of the river at the bottom.

Here is another nice detail of the town from a map that I did not document well enough to provide much more information on.

From the Annapolis Heritage Society Archival Collection, here is a 1744 map by “N. B. Ing De la M.”

Finally, from the same archives here is a somewhat darkly photographed “Part of North America including the Harbor of Annapolis Royal” by Nat Blackmore, 1712.

If you’re in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia and want to get your fill of historic maps, a trip to the O’Dell House is highly recommended.

Some Maps in the Wild: Nova Scotia Edition

There is an entire web site dedicated to #MapsintheWild - also a social media hashtag. On a recent trip to Nova Scotia, I found some very nice examples, including last week's post. Here are a few more. 

There are many memorials throughout the province to the Acadians who were expelled from Canada (also from Maine) by the British starting in 1755. Here is a map found along the Halifax waterfront showing migration and expulsion routes.

Also on the waterfront is Cable Wharf, the endpoint of a 3,200 kilometer long cable under the Atlantic Ocean that connected Europe to North America. This large cylindrical monument (like a spool of cable) includes a map of the transatlantic cables that wraps around the entire cylinder.

Though almost impossible to adequately photograph here is my attempt at a close up of part of the map. The cables are dashed lines that are very hard to see.

Finally, in Wolfville, near the Bay of Fundy, there is a large piece called Work at the Trestle. This bronze sculpture by Ruth Abernethy features T. T. Vernon Smith, civil engineer and builder of the Windsor and Annapolis Railway looking over a map showing damage to the railway after a huge storm in 1869. More on this monument can be seen here.

Here I am looking over his shoulder.

Again a work this large is tough to photograph in a meaningful way. Here is a little bit of the map detail. 

Here is the work shown in context at the waterfront park. The gazebo shown on the sculpture is just to the right of the photo.