A rare Town of Guelph map has taken up residence at the Guelph Civic Museum on Norfolk Street. The map, hand drawn in 1868 by surveyor Joseph Hobson, was found in the basement of a local home and donated to the museum in 2008. It took two years and 275 hours to restore the map its original condition.
Kathleen Wall, assistant curator at the museum, said she believes the map is a one-of-a-kind created by little known mapmaker Hobson.
“We don’t know a lot about him. He doesn’t do large-scale maps, he does little survey maps and what we think this is, is actually the legend of these survey maps,” said Wall. “This is the only large-scale map that Hobson did.”
A legend map or key map is a visual index system to track down other smaller maps that fit within the larger map’s boundaries. Hobson’s map fits that description, and different coloured blocks of lots such as “Grange Survey” and “Ferguson’s Survey” are clearly labeled on the map.
Due to age and water damage, the map was in horrible condition when the museum received it. The staff was concerned about the condition of the map; each time it was unrolled, pieces of it would begin to fall off.
Luck played a part in its restoration though. Within days of the map coming into the museum’s possession, an email arrived from the Canadian Conservation Institute, a Government of Canada program that promotes and conserves Canada’s cultural heritage, encouraging the museum to submit an application for a restoration project.
No other museums had such a map by Hobson. “We got lucky once we found out how rare it was … and CCI accepted our application,” said Wall. “The head conservator and student interns worked on it, and had many different challenges. They had to replace the whole backing, put the loose pieces back on. They had to wash the paper to get it back to the original colour. They did not recolour anything. The washing highlighted the hand painting that’s on the map.”
The project began in 2009 and the map was returned to the museum in April of this year. The map measures approximately five feet by five feet and features an interesting scale. “It was done in the old fashion measurement of chains, where each loop of the chain was a certain length,” said Wall. “It is to scale.” The chain was often 100 links long with each link measuring a certain length.
The map is not on permanent public display due to the expense associated with special framing and preservation glass, but anyone can make an appointment with Wall to view the map. Eventually it will be digitized and available for viewing online with the rest of the museum’s collection. Wall encourages people to come and see the map.
“You often don’t get a chance to see an old map like this in Guelph anyway, but to see a hand-coloured one and see one from this time period when Guelph was experiencing a lot of growth, it’s a pretty amazing piece of Guelph history.”
If you would like to arrange a viewing email kathleen.wall@guelph.ca