Description
The nine inset illustrations with scenes from Lincoln’s life depict the log cabin he was born in, his first romance with Ann Rutledge, the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, the building in Chicago where he was nominated for president, the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, his inauguration procession, Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address, John Wilkes Booth running from the scene of Lincoln’s assassination, and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. There is a decorative compass rose in the upper right corner. A large illustration that is part of the map’s lower right corner depicts his grandfather, also named Abraham Lincoln, walking alongside a covered wagon in 1782 when he and his family traveled through the Cumberland Gap to settle in Kentucky.
Karl Smith produced two versions of this map, the first published in 1934 and a revised version published in 1953. They have some similarities in basic cartography and concept, but the overall layout is different, with a different cartouche and portrait of Lincoln top center, and the addition in the 1953 version of nine inset illustrations along the top and two inset boxes in the lower left corner. The inset illustrations from the 1953 version are by and large based on ones that appeared in the 1934 version. The Sangamon River, which is partially rendered in the 1934 map, is omitted in the later one. They can be compared on our website: 1934 | 1953.
Karl Smith was a designer and illustrator of pictorial maps. His primary career was as an executive in the paper and graphic arts industries, but he drew maps as an avocation. Smith was also an active amateur historian who amassed a major collection on heraldry and genealogy and presented lectures on printing, paper, color, heraldry, and the life of Benjamin Franklin. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Speed Art Museum (then the J.B. Speed Art Museum) in Louisville, Kentucky, commissioned Karl Smith to make a series of pictorial maps of the states. In 1959 he created a series of four historical pictorial maps of the United States for Linweave Paper Company, showing the nation’s growth and development from the colonial era to the present. Over the course of his career he produced maps of North Carolina, Arkansas, Ohio, Mississippi, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Florida, the Stratford Plantation in Virginia, and historical maps of the lives of Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee.
Condition: Generally very good, recently professionally cleaned and deacidified with only light remaining toning and wear.
References:
“Growth and development of America in maps by Linweave.” Springfield, Massachusetts: Linweave Paper Company, 1959. Online at: David Rumsey Map Collection. https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~290344~90061854:Text-Page–Growth-and-development-o?qvq=w4s:/who%2FSmith%2C%2BKarl;lc:RUMSEY~8~1&mi=4&trs=30 (16 April 2019).
Hornsby, Stephen J. Picturing America, The Golden Age of Pictorial Maps. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. pp. 166-67.
“Images by Smith, Karl.” David Rumsey Map Collection. https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/view/all/who/Smith,+Karl (16 April 2019).
