17
Three weeks trying to figure out why a 1790s map of Boston had a street that didn't exist yet
Turns out the map was from 1795 not 1790 and the street got built between those years, but I only caught it after I spent an afternoon cross-referencing tax records at the library, has anyone else been burned by a wrong date on a map before?
2 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In2 Comments
hart.ryan5h ago
Slide into that rabbit hole with you, I spent a whole weekend once chasing a phantom street on a 1920s Sanborn map only to discover it was drawn in pencil but never actually paved. The smallest date typo can throw off hours of research when you're trying to match old records to a modern layout. It's wild how one little number can make you doubt your entire sanity until you double-check the source.
3
ryanburns2h ago
Yeah, "the smallest date typo can throw off hours of research" is exactly what I keep going back to. But here's the thing, it wasn't a typo. The mapmaker dated it 1790 on purpose. They just rounded down the year or used an old plate without fixing the date. That's different from a typo. A typo is a mistake. This was a choice, even if a lazy one. And it drove me nuts for three weeks, not just a weekend with a pencil street. You can double-check a Sanborn map's pencil marks in a day. But whole books and tax ledgers from the 1790s? That's a rabbit hole you don't climb out of fast. So yeah, I feel your pain, but let's call it what it is: a bad date, not a typo.
-1