Maine Historical Society

The Barclay Collection (Coll. 26) at the Maine Historical Society includes original manuscript materials of the British Commissioners assigned to the boundary commissions for the line running from the islands in Passamaquoddy Bay near Nova Scotia and Maine, westerly to Lake of the Woods, Ontario from 1797 to 1843. In particular, the maps, surveys, and correspondence between the International Boundary Commissioners and surveyors give us a window into the world of nineteenth-century boundary survey work. This article will briefly describe the history of this archival collection, give some background into nineteenth-century boundary surveys, describe the original maps and letters by Great Lakes surveyor David Thompson, and will highlight a few of the map treasures to be found within the collection.

"The Mapmaker's Eye: David Thompson on the Columbia Plateau." Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization, 42(1), pp. 104–105