An Indiana Historical Society (IHS) traveling exhibit about maps will be on display in Seymour during October.
The Seymour Museum Center will host the exhibit, titled Indiana Through the Mapmaker’s Eye, at the Old Federal Building located at the southeast corner of Chestnut and Fourth streets.
The exhibit is drawn from IHS’s collection of about 1,700 maps and atlases of Indiana and the Midwest dating from the 16th century to the present. It examines four ways people have used maps through the years: as documentation, as tools, as political images and as art.
Some of the maps in the exhibit include an 1833 tourist’s Indiana pocket map; a 1913 Sanborn Company fire insurance map for Bloomington; Thomas Kitchin’s 1747 map of French settlements in North America; an 1881 bird’s-eye view of Mount Vernon.; and a circa 1880 scale-model map of the University of Notre Dame.
Local maps on display will include an 1880s bird’s-eye view of Seymour as well as a variety of Sanborn Fire Insurance maps from 1886 to 1924 and the revisions that followed.
Individuals may send a Facebook message to SMC if they have maps which they would allow to be copied for display — especially those from the 1800s and the first half of the 20th century.
Groups, including school classes, may schedule tours by contacting the Seymour Museum Center through a message on its Facebook page or by calling SMC president Lenny Hauersperger at 812-530-9272.
