Southern-Made Maps Blend Old-World and New

In 2014, Travis Folk founded New World Cartography, a Southern map company that blends modern computer mapping with old-world hand craftsmanship. Based in North Carolina and working with two craftsmen from South Carolina, the company creates maps that appeal especially to history lovers, combining accurate modern data with the look and feel of maps from centuries past.

The South’s Long Mapmaking Tradition

Mapmaking has a proud history in the South. Some of the most famous maps of the War Between the States were drawn by a Southern mapmaker: Jedediah Hotchkiss, the topographical engineer for General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.

Hotchkiss was a schoolteacher in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley before the war. Jackson asked him to make a map of the Valley “from Harpers Ferry to Lexington,” showing every point of attack and defense. Hotchkiss’s detailed, hand-drawn maps gave Jackson a priceless advantage in his famous Valley Campaign of 1862, when his small army outmarched and outfought several Union forces. Hotchkiss later served on the staffs of Generals Ewell and Early, and his maps are still studied today. Many are preserved at the Library of Congress.

Why Old-Style Maps Still Matter

Before satellites and GPS, a good map was a work of art and a matter of life and death. Mapmakers walked the land, sketched the roads and streams and drew everything by hand. Modern craftsmen like those at New World Cartography keep that tradition alive, creating pieces that are both useful and beautiful.

For history buffs, a hand-finished map of a home county, a battlefield or an old plantation road is a way to connect with the land and the people who came before. Read about one of the men who relied on Hotchkiss’s maps in There Stands Jackson Like a Stone Wall, and browse our Confederate flag collection.

Source: Garden & Gun: Southern-Made Maps Blend Old-World and New

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