Cleveland History Blog

Maurice Fox Map Collection, Hiram College

The Maurice Fox Collection is a terrific assemblage of rare old maps of North America, the United States, Ohio and the Western Reserve, which are kept in Special Collections at Hiram College. I’d heard about this collection from Joanne Sawyer, then the College Archivist, back when we first formed the Northern Ohio Map Society a decade ago, but I’d never gotten around to seeing it until last week.

On Wednesday, I traveled down to Hiram, in the company of Tom Edwards, Map Librarian with the Cleveland Public Library, to meet with History professor Robert Sawyer, (Joanne’s husband), Joanne herself and Lisa Johnson, who took over as archivist when Joanne retired. Tom and I were quite impressed with the Fox Collection, particularly the dozen they had on exhibit, showing the evolution of Western knowledge of the Great Lakes, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries and the progressive settlement of Ohio thereafter.

Dr. Sawyer is organizing a conference, “The Idea of the Map,” scheduled for March 20th at Hiram and I will be presenting on the topic of the history and digitizing of the maps of Ohio and the Western Reserve at that conference. For more information, he can be reached at SawyerRW@hiram.edu.

posted by Bill Barrow @ 5:25:00 PM