Monday, September 23, 2013

Mappy Monday (September 23, 2013) -- 1838 Newell Nelson map of Cumberland, Rhode Island




Back in July, Diane MacLean Boumenot of the One Rhode Island Family blog posted a very helpful indexed map of the City of Providence in 1881.  At that time, I mentioned to Diane that among the genealogy treasures I have from my Rhode Island ancestors is an 18 x 24 map of the Town of Cumberland, Rhode Island by Newell Nelson dated 1838.  The map also has an inset showing the Plan of the Villages at Woonsocket Falls, Rhode Island at a scale of 40 rods to the inch.   The map identifies family homes and property (including that of my 3 X great grandfather, Eber Miller), but virtully none of the roads are named.

Diane found the Newell Nelson map of interest because it mentions a member of her Ballou family.  She posted a week ago about her use of the map to enhance her knowledge about her 6x great grandfather, Richard Ballou.  I recommend you read Diane's careful, well-written, and thorough explanation of her search for Richard's property at "Locating Richard Ballou." 

Because of the size of the original map in my possession, I could not scan it on my small flatbed and so I took it to Staples for processing on their oversize scanner.  I was not thinking, however, and so I arrived home with the scanned image of the map on my thumb drive only to find it was in .pdf format -- which cannot be uploaded on Blogger.  The image above is from a printed copy of the .pdf file that I force-fit into an 8 1/2 x 11 image frame and then scanned as a .jpg file -- but this means the detail of the small identified property names is virtually impossible to make out.

After communication with Diane about this problem, she very kindly tried three times to converted the full .pdf file that I sent her some weeks ago into a manageable and usable .jpg file -- BUT the conversions range from 10 to 20.7 MBs and each is too large to upload on Blogger. In the interest of getting this map out to those who might be interested, I have given up trying to post a usable size map.  Any readers who have a real interest in obtaining a usable version of the map, please email me at the contact address on The Prism home page and I will email you as an attachment the full-size .jpg version -- just be advised that it is over 20 MBs.
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Scan of the original map in the collection of the author.

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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew
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8 comments:

  1. John, I would highly recommend to your readers that they take you up on your offer to email the map. It had every name listed in the sections I was looking at. It's quite a treasure. Thank you for making this available.

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  2. My pleasure Diane! This is one of the things I love about the internet and blogging -- being able to share resources like this that might be of assistance to others in their family research. ;-)

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  3. John, I would love a copy of that 1838 Cumberland map.Thanks Tom Deighan tomdoan7@gmail.com

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  4. Hello John, Could you send the 1838 Cumberland map to me please? I will frame and hang it in my house. Do you have the 1875 and 1895 Cumberland maps too? Thank you, johnd1216@cox.net

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  5. Hello John:
    Could you send me a copy of the 1838 Newell Nelson map of Cumberland, Rhode Island.
    I have been looking for a clean copy of this map. I am a Land Surveyor and think it is very interesting that map shows the original division line between Plymouth Colony & The Massachusetts Bay Company as running through Cumberland from the Angle Tree in Wrentham to the Blackstone River - Also looking for primary source documentation of the origin of the name Burnt Swamp believed to go back to shortly after King Philips War - such a big event must have been written down somewhere by someone. EJOBPLS2000@COX.NET

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  6. Love your stories about the map and connection with the One Rhode Island Family blog. Both of these have been very useful to me in my own research. Please visit the Museum of Work and Culture in Woonsocket, RI November 2017, in celebration of their 20th anniversary they are opening an exhibit that explores the history of RI using interactive maps and a database that many families have contributed to.

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  7. Hi John I was wondering if you could possibly send me a copy of the Cumberland map thank you my email is deefayfay@gmail.com

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  8. Hello John, I would also appreciate it if you would send me a copy of the map. RobertManke1052@gmail.com

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