GPLNE March Meeting
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers/New England District
Concord, Massachusetts
Friday, March 14, 2008
Attendance
Len Adams, UMass/Amherst
Naomi Allen, State Lib/MA
Deborah Angelo, Providence College
Betty Febo, Clapp Library/Wellesley College
Jacqueline Fitzpatrick, Clapp Library/Wellesley College
Pam Hays, Becker College
Timothy Hays, Army Corps of Engineers Library – Concord, MA
Donna Koepp, Readex/Newsbank
Jim MacDonald, Connecticut College
Deborah Mongeau, URI
Rebecca Ohm, Williams College
Thelma Thompson, UNH
Julia Tryon, Phillips Memorial Library/Providence College
Connie Reik, Tufts
Bette Siegel, State Lib/MA
Jim Walsh, Readex/Newsbank
GPLNE March Meeting Agenda
U. S. Army Corps of Engineers
New England District, Concord, MA
Friday, March 14, 2008
The GPLNE March Meeting was held at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers/New England District, located in Concord, Massachusetts on Friday, March 14, 2008. Fourteen members were in attendance, as well as Jim Walsh and Donna Koepp from Readex/Newsbank.
We were welcomed by Timothy Hays, the Corps’ librarian in Concord, who gave us background information on the facility. The staff is comprised of three hundred engineers, twenty lawyers, and support staff for the individual departments they head. There are forty-one Army Corps libraries, and the divisions were established at water shed locations across the country. The headquarters for this group is located in the GAO Building in Washington, DC.
Tim originally had about 15,000 reports and 8,000 titles in this library, dating back to 1900. However, now that the material is available online, the old library space was dismantled, and Tim distributed reports to various institutions. Bette Siegel of the Massachusetts State Library took all of the material relating to our state. If GPLNE members need any additional information about this facility, Tim encouraged the members to send their inquiries to him @
or ---
www.usace.army.mil/publications
Connie Reik then started the Business Meeting. The minutes for the November meeting were approved. Deborah Angelo reported $675.22 in the Treasury. A request was made for two volunteers for a new Nominating Committee. Betty Febo and Debbie Mongeau offered their services. Their slate will hold offices for the 2008-2009 calendar year. Jim Walsh will serve as the upcoming Chair. We are looking for a new Vice-Chair.
There was a brief discussion about WorldCat Local and BLC’s interest in this project. Debbie Mongeau feels that Government Documents holdings should be cataloged just as titles are for the regular collection. The meeting ended with information about GPLNE’s last meeting to be held at the Warwick Public Library on May 2, 2008, from 10:30-12:00. Connie, a genealogical expert, will deliver a talk on “Soldiers and Sailors of the 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries in Government Publications for Historical and Family Research.”
Donna Koepp, our guest speaker, delivered a presentation she had done for the Corps of Engineer Librarians in Washington, DC, last spring. The title of her talk was “Reports and Maps in the U.S. Congressional Serial Set.” She passed around a copy of The History of the Army Corps that she had received in the mail. It was published in 2007 and provided her with additional valuable information, though she has not been able to discover the name of the sender.
The following is a summary of the dates and pertinent facts Donna discovered from the engineer reports and maps found in the U.S. Congressional Serial Set:
1817 – The first volume of the Serial Set began. The set grew to 38 volumes, and there were various names --- American State Papers, Serial Number Set, Sheet Set. By 1969, when the CIS print index stopped, there were over 57,000 maps in the set. LexisNexis discovered 3 to 4,000 U.S. maps when they enhanced their map module and Readex/Newsbank then found another 3,000 maps in their current map project for the Serial Set.
The Army Corps owes its origins to George Washington, who asked for qualified engineers at the time of the Revolutionary War, and even before the founding of the Military Academy in 1802, West Point had taken on the additional role of educating officers in the sciences of engineering and gunnery. The first mention of the need for “ a small corps of well-disciplined … engineers” appeared in a document dating from 1790. Our first engineers were French. Charles L’Enfant and Bechet Rochefontaine were two of the most famous. By 1794 we had trained 800 men at the “Fundamental School “ for the training of these American students. It was also referred to as the “School of Engineers & Artillerists.” By 1819, the Academy published the names of the cadets and the history and origin of West Point. A history of the earliest cadets continued to be printed through 1834. As the country grew, these men had to design mines, counter mines, roads, canals, etc. The earliest maps, requested in the Law of 1807, were coastal and the resulting survey was managed by Ferdinand Hassler. The government had provided some funding, but it was not enough for all the mapping that needed to be done.
In the 1820s the first map of the Reservation of Detroit was published, followed by
a chart of twenty-seven remote U.S. posts drawn by Major Long, head of the Topographical Engineers. Donna discussed these other maps of historical interest.
1824 – The passage of the General Survey Act that would not only allow the President (at the time James Monroe) to use military surveyors for civilian projects of national interest, but also appropriated $30,000 to fund such surveys. Maps of the country’s inland waterways were begun.
1833 – The first colored map of Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, was produced.
1835 – Map of St. Augustine’s sea wall. The wall had been built by the Spanish. After they ceded the area to us, stones were removed, and the wall was badly weakened. Requests were made to the government for funding, and the map illustrated what had to be done to restore it.
1836 - A map of the Rock River Rapids on the Mississippi River was drawn. It was determined that there would be a need for channel openings in this part of the river. Thousands of maps dealing with dredging projects were eventually drawn.
1837 – Major Generals Winfield Scott & Edmund Gaines were involved in Florida’s Seminole Indian Wars. The military engineer, Simon Bernard, headed a major project of coastal fortifications in this area as white settlers moved into Florida, transplanting the native Indians. The Seminole were the most resistant to being removed from their lands, and there were a series of wars between the Army and the Indians.
1840s-1870s – The Topographical Bureau published more detailed maps of the eastern sections of New England and the Chesapeake Bay areas. Even rocks, shoals, and lighthouses of these coastal areas were included in these nineteenth century maps.
1840s – John Charles Fremont, a Second Lieutenant in the Corps of Topographical engineers, headed a series of expeditions, to the lands between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, learning his mapping skills from Joseph Nicollet. Expeditions continued with the famous scout, Kit Carson, as they travelled to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon, and northern California. The maps, the only ones available for these areas, proved to be invaluable to the early settlers as they continued to push to the western parts of the country.
1846-1848 – William Emory, another First Lieutenant in the Corps of the Topographical Engineers and the chief astronomer, determined the boundary line between California and Mexico. Major Stephen Kearney, used the maps showing fortifications, in his battles to win California from Mexico during these war years.
1849-1855 – Maps were drawn of the towns traveled through by Captain Sitgreaves (the Zuni & Colorado River Expedition) and many Pacific Railroad surveys were done by different groups of engineers and naturalists. It was essential for the Pacific Railroad to know where tracks could be laid. The 3rd expedition (the 35th Parallel Survey), under the command of Lieutenant A.W. Whipple, followed the 35th parallel from Fort Smith, AR, to the Mojave Desert in southern CA. Lieutenant Williamson was in charge of part of this surveying which extended from the 32nd to the 35th parallel and a coastal route. Some of the naturalists on these journeys were J.M Bigelow, J Marcou, and Caleb Kennerly.
1865-1866 – As the Civil War ended further expeditions continued. Lieutenant Williamson oversaw the mapping of routes in Oregon and Nevada as the transatlantic railroad made its way across the United States.
Donna ended her presentation with a little background information on the Readex product. It is providing a full copy of Corps maps regardless of size, and some are very large. There are maps from the late eighteenth century up to 1937, but indexing has only been done through the 1880s. The company is currently indexing maps from 1901.
After the lecture, Tim Hays took us to the present library facility and to the larger space that was used before the downsizing. At the completion of the tour, a number of those in attendance left for lunch at the Colonial Inn in Concord.
Submitted by Jacqueline Fitzpatrick, GPLNE Secretary
March 20, 2008