1935 Yardley Pictorial Map of Baltimore County, Maryland, Likely Proof Print

Comic yet honest pictorial map of Baltimore County.

This is a c. 1935 Richard Yardley pictorial map of Baltimore County, Maryland, presented here in an unusual two-tone printing. Populated by comical caricatures of the county's residents, Yardley both mocks and celebrates Baltimore history.

A Closer Look

The map covers Baltimore County in central Maryland. The city of Baltimore itself does not appear on the map since it was separated from the county in 1851. Many of these vignettes illustrate historical events, such as the county's founding, its involvement in the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the American Civil War. Yardley acknowledges the role Native Americans played, noting that many modern-day county roads began as Indian trails. The other side of the coin was that Fort Garrison, near Pikesville, was built to defend against those same Indians. Joppa occupies a sizable portion of the map, with its bustling trade with England and the West Indies prominently touted. A banner also states that the city was the county seat in 1712.

Tom Thumb

At the bottom is an illustration of Tom Thumb, the first American-built locomotive, which was designed by Peter Cooper (1791 - 1883) in 1829 to convince the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to employ steam engines (rather than horses, as was hitherto the case). Though the details are somewhat inexact and the whole story may be a legend, the railroad arranged a race between Cooper's steam engine and a single horse from Baltimore to a rail junction called Relay. The locomotive gained a quick lead until a belt slipped off its blower pulley, considerably slowing the steam engine and allowing the horse to win the race. But the railroad was nevertheless convinced of the superiority of steam engines and, by the following year, had replaced all horse teams with steam engines on its rail lines.

Antebellum America

Yardley references slavery twice, although neither is as cutting as would have been hoped. Two upper-class people meet in the upper right corner (near the decorative compass rose), and the man states, 'I do not wish to impose,' to which the woman responds, 'My many slaves make it no problem.' The second reference appears on the lower left, next to a very wealthy gentleman dressed in his finest clothes, who states that 'many loving slaves help me in my labors' while 'ye loving slaves' are illustrated in the shadows toiling away, utterly indistinguishable from one another.

Publication History and Census

This map was created by Richard Yardley and published c. 1935. We have not encountered this two-tone variant before, which likely is a proof state of the map. An example of the multicolor print is part of the David Rumsey Map Collection, but neither printing of the map appears in the OCLC.

Cartographer

Richard Quincy Yardley (March 11, 1903 - November 24, 1979), known euphemistically as 'Moco,' was an American cartoonist based in Baltimore. Yardley worked as a cartoonist for the Baltimore Sun from 1923. In 1949 he became the editorial cartoonist for the Baltimore Sun, a position he held for roughly 20 years. He also produced cartoons for The Saturday Evening Post, The New Yorker and the Reporter. His syndicated daily comic, Our Ancestors, was published from 1961 to 1965. His work exhibited a humorous satirical style drawing on local personalities and historical events. One writer, Charles Bissell, described his work thus,

His style, which might be described as early Ming, middle comic strip, late Picasso, and all Yardley—or perhaps better some other way-is not suitable for editorial cartoons. To begin with, it's not serious. We all know how you've got to be mighty serious about lots of things-atom bombs, for instance. You couldn't put over something big and profound by drawing a couple of nudeniks with four heads, a little banjo-eyed character in a beret and maybe a cat, all caught up in some sort of symbolical astral soup and expect to scare daylights out of your readers. Well, no, you couldn't—but Yardley can. (AAEC News, April 1964)

He issued several satirical cartoon maps, including a map of Herr Hitler's Heaven, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Anne Arundel County, Baltimore County, and Annapolis. Yardley was a member of the National Cartoonists Society, the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists and the National Press Club. He retired in 1972.   Further Details...

Condition

Fine.

References

Rumsey 11708.002.