Texas Nach den besten Quellen entw. U. Gez. Vom Hauptm. Radefeld.

Description

This is the rare second edition of sheet 113 from Meyer’s Grosser Zeitungs-Atlas, drawn by Carl Radefeld and published by the Bibliographisches Institut in Hildburghausen around 1850, substantially revised from the first edition to reflect the transformed political geography of the American Southwest following the Mexican-American War.

Based originally on William Hemsley Emory’s seminal 1844 map of Texas, the foundational US Government survey of the Republic, it has here been extensively updated to show the post-war territorial settlement: Utah Territory and New Mexico Territory newly created, the Rio Grande fixed as an international border, and Texas reduced from its extravagant Republic-era claims to its present boundaries.

The second edition is far scarcer than the first and contains a remarkable accumulation of new detail, including what appears to be the first recorded use of the name Tarrant on any printed map.

The Map in Detail

The first edition of this map had shown a Texas of enormous ambition — extending north to Wyoming, west to the Rio Grande, and east to the Mississippi — reflecting the Republic’s maximalist territorial claims.

The present second edition replaces that configuration entirely with the post-Guadalupe Hidalgo settlement: Utah Territory and New Mexico Territory are now delineated, the Rio Grande traces its new function as an international border, and the Indian Territory to the northeast is named and organized with the Five Civilized Tribes — Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Osage, and Seminole — each assigned and labeled in their reservations. Comancheria is acknowledged across the heart of Texas as the dominant territorial reality on the Southern Plains. New roads appear throughout Texas, and the place-name density has increased markedly, particularly along the upper Trinity River and its tributaries and in the vicinity of Fort Houston.

Near Dallas, the name Tarrant appears — an early cartographic record of the county that would grow to encompass Fort Worth, named for General Edward H. Tarrant, who had led the campaign to open North Texas to settlement. A curious annotation on the Red River records Kentucky Ansiedlungen — Kentucky settlements — a trace of the Anglophone frontier communities pushing into the river valley from the east. The Rocky Mountains and Colorado receive significant new detail, as do the Kansas River system and its tributaries in the Indian Territory.

Historical Context

The window this map occupies is narrow and precise: after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), which ended the Mexican-American War and fixed the Rio Grande as the border, and before the Gadsden Purchase (1853), which would add a further strip of southern Arizona and New Mexico to the United States. It is a map of the Southwest in its brief moment of post-war settlement, before the next round of territorial adjustment.

Radefeld’s underlying source, Emory’s 1844 map, had been the most authoritative cartographic record of Texas during its decade as an independent republic, compiled during Emory’s service with the US Army Corps of Topographical Engineers and widely used by both government and commercial cartographers in the years following.

The present revision transforms that foundation into something considerably more current, incorporating the surveying and exploration of the intervening years. The Comanche remain the dominant power across the Southern Plains — that would not change for another quarter century — but the framework around them has been entirely redrawn.