1926 Shurtleff Pictorial Map of New Hampshire

Elizabeth Shurtleff (September 3, 1890 - December 7, 1968), or Elizabeth Cate, was an American painter and artist active in the middle part of the 20th century. She was born in Concord, New Hampshire and attended the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts. Shurtleff is known for a small but significant corpus of pictorial maps issued alone and in collaboration with others between 1926 and 1930. She frequently collaborated with Wellesley graduates and pictorial mapmakers Helen F. McMillin, Elizabeth L. McMillin, and Alva Bennett Scott. These women were at the forefront of a new generation of female mapmakers emerging in the mid-20th century. Together with Helen F. McMillin, Shurtleff headed the Boston based Graphic History Association Publishers of Historical Maps. Elizabeth was married to Carroll L. Cate of Montreal. She died in Montreal in 1968. More by this mapmaker...

Helen Frances McMillin (June 9, 1896 - June 6, 1987) was and American publisher, writer, editor, and illustrator active in the middle part of the 20th century. McMillin was born to a prominent family of North Adams, Massachusetts and attended Wellesley College, where she was editor of the Wellesley Legenda and Wellesley College News. =After graduating in 1917, she moved to Boston, where she worked as publisher of the Granite Monthly. She remained in until at least 1926, but in 1930 she was living in New York City where she worked at the Museum of Modern Art. We have had a difficult time assessing out her marriage situation based upon announcements published in the North Adams Transcript. In 1921 there was an announcement of her engagement to Royal Stuart Steiner of Wisconsin, an economics professor. Another announcement appeared in 1930, to Richard G. Francois of New York. A third appears to suggest she married Royal Stewart Van de Woestyne (1892 - 1967), a Knox College economic professor, in 1933. Based upon ancestry research, it appears that Steiner and Van de Woestyne are one in the same, and so a name change may have occurred, for unclear reasons. She is the aunt of another important female pictorial map mapmaker and artist, Elisabeth L. McMillin (1909 - 19??). Together with Helen F. McMillin, Shurtleff headed the Boston based Graphic History Association Publishers of Historical Maps, which published several important pictorial maps between 1926 and 1936. Helen died in Hamilton, Ohio. Learn More...