“Maps are artifacts of their time, and, as such, they are
windows, not only on the world of the past that they represent,
but on the worldview or the mind of the time that produced
them.”—Robert Finch, The 1858 Map of Cape Cod, Martha’s
Vineyard, & Nantucket Robert Finch’s commentary, “Two Windows,”
which appears in The 1858 Map of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, &
Nantucket, tells us about the two views the map presents. One is
“a wide-angle or macroview of its time,” he writes, while the
other is a closer look at the people who lived then, including
their individual stories. The broader view gives us town borders
and bodies of water, village centers and back roads. The deeper,
more penetrating look reveals, for example, that many of the
listed heads of household in Truro Village—no fewer than
17—begin with “Mrs.”, which denotes a widow. “The explanation
lies in the tragic gale of October 3, 1841,” Finch writes in his
commentary, “in which the lives of fifty-seven Truro men were
lost at sea.” Such fascinating g