[FOUND MAP] The Masthead Map of the San Mateo Item Newspaper - The Daily Render by Nikolas R. Schiller

[FOUND MAP] The Masthead Map of the San Mateo Item Newspaper
|| 10/23/2009 || 7:55 pm || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

Click image above to view in full resolution
Click here to view the entire page

As I mentioned previously, this week I’ve been exploring the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers archive. Last night I came up with the idea that I could create an entirely new blog dedicated to showing news from exactly 100 years ago. Dubbed “The Hundred Year Old News Blog,” each entry would be a newspaper article from exactly 100 years ago and to test the theory, I decided to see what today’s blog entry would have been. To my surprise, I found that the now-defunct newspaper called the San Mateo Item used a map of eastern Florida for it’s masthead.

According to the entry in Chronicling America:

The San Mateo Item began publishing in 1891. F.A. Bailey was one of its early editors. The paper periodically appeared under the title of the Item. It is unknown when the San Mateo Item finally ceased publication, but holdings are reported in the Putnam County Archives for 1913.

San Mateo is located in Putnam County in northeastern Florida. The area sustained various agricultural activities about which the San Mateo Item reported. San Mateo was also well known for its recreational opportunities, having more than a thousand ponds and lakes and approximately one hundred miles of access to the St. Johns River, especially attractive to bass fishermen. Sporting activities were of sufficient note to merit coverage by the British press. The Outing, a London sports magazine, complained in its 1891-92 issue that the Item had reprinted one of its articles without credit. The Outing asserted that its enterprise was dedicated in part to distributing “articles likely to attract the sportsman to Florida.” Apparently, San Mateo was worth watching.

Currently there is not a Wikipedia entry for San Mateo Item newspaper

What is interesting about the map is that its presented in a East to West configuration instead of the modern North to South configuration. Starting from the right side of the map going left, you trace Florida’s longest river, St. Johns River, north towards Jacksonville, and near the middle you have the newspaper’s namesake, San Mateo.

The map shows the following towns, lakes, and railroads (roughly South/Right to North/Left):

Sanford
Lake Monroe (Shown, but not listed)
Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (Listed as A. C. L. R. R.)
Lake George
Crescent City
Crescent Lake (Now known as Lake Crescent)
Daytona (Renamed Daytona Beach in 1926 after the merger of the towns Seabreze and Daytona Beach)
Ormond (Renamed Ormond Beach in 1949)
Florida East Coast Railway
Welaka
San Mateo
Palatka
East Palatka
Hastings
Federal Point
St. Augustine (Founded in 1565, it is the oldest continuously occupied European established city, and the oldest port, in the continental United States)
Green Cove Springs
Pablo (Changed to Jacksonville Beach in 1925)
Atlantic Beach
Mayport
Jacksonville

Finding this unique map has given me some extra enthusiasm for finding more maps in old newspapers!

Related Found Maps:

This is great. I grew up in central Florida, about an hour southwest of Palatka. Noteworthy is it shows Palataka as a transportation hub with the railroad lines and the Saint Johns. My hometown, Wildwood, was a similar railroad hub but the decline of the railroads turned these towns into backwaters despite a still strong agricultural economy.

I love looking at old maps of Florida, railroads stitched the state together.

Comment by Martha — 10/23/2009 @ 9:58 pm