Cowpaths Research

“Cowpaths of Waltham” is a non-fiction comic which appears in Inbound 4: A Comic Book History of Boston.

I met Dave Unger under random circumstances (involving apartment searching). At that time, I was planning to make a history comic for the upcoming Inbound 4 anthology, but I wasn’t sure what story to use. When I learned that Dave U. was a historian specializing in local Waltham history, I immediately asked him about making a comic based on his research. I think Dave was surprised at first, but he was enthusiastic about the idea.

The rest, to use a cliche, is history.

In January 2010, Dave U. and I gave a short talk about this comic at Porter Books, as part of an event promoting Inbound 4. Below is an adaptation of that presentation.

I'm Dave Unger and this is Aya Rothwell, and we wrote a comic about how the roads in Waltham are based on old cow paths. Now, I'm a historian, who's never been involved with comics before, and Aya is a comics creator who hasn't done a lot historical research about Boston. So we're going to talk about some of the similarities and differences between this project and the academic history that I write for my day job.

“Cow Paths of Waltham” bibliography and contact

Nelson, Charles Alexander. Waltham, past and present; and its industries. M. King, 1882.

Petersen, Kristen A, and Waltham Rediscovered (Organization). Waltham Rediscovered: An Ethnic History of Waltham, Massachusetts. Portsmouth, NH: Published for Waltham Rediscovered by P.E. Randall, 1988.

Ripley, Samuel. “A Topographical and Historical Description of Waltham, in the County of Middlesex,” Mass. Historical Society Collections. Series 2, Volume 3, 1815. pg 261-284.

Sanderson, Edmund Lincoln. Waltham as a precinct of Watertown and as a town, 1630-1884. Waltham historical society, inc., 1936.

Starbuck, Alexander. “Waltham,” in History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts: Containing Carefully Prepared Histories of Every City and Town in the County, Ed. Samuel Adams Drake. Boston: Estes and Lauriat, 1880.

Diaz, Johnny “How now? Cow path tale is pure bull.” Boston Globe 25 April 2004

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2004/04/25/how_now_cow_path_tale_is_pure_bull/

Bowling, G. A. “The introduction of Cattle into Colonial North America.” Journal of Dairy Science Vol. 25 No. 2 (1942): 129-154

Colonial Williamsburg Official Site. 2009. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. 23 August 2009. <http://www.history.org/>

Stilgoe, John R. Common Landscape of America, 1580 to 1845. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.

Colonial Kids. 2000. ThinkQuest. 23 August 2009. <http://library.thinkquest.org/J002611F/introduction.htm>

The Claude Moore Colonial Farm. 23 August 2009. <http://www.1771.org/>

History of American Milking Devon Cattle. 2009. American Milking Devon Cattle Association. 23 August 2009. <http://www.milkingdevons.org/hist.html>

Googlemaps. Google. 24 August 2009. <http://maps.google.com/>

Dave Unger is currently a PhD candidate in the History of Science at Harvard University. He is writing on a dissertation about the daily life of machinists in early 19th century shop, and works as a photographer at the Harvard's Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments.

You can reach Dave Unger at dsunger (at) fas.harvard.edu

Aya Rothwell grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. She went to school at Boston University, studying biology, art and film production. Aya works in an office and makes comics. To draw this story, Aya spent some quality time with cows, sketching them.

You can reach Aya at Aya.Rothwell (at) gmail.com

Here's an example of what we began with. This is from an old text about Waltham history. It describes the paths of the three herds that graze in Waltham.

So that’s how one can do historical research and turn it into a comic, conveying a lot of information in a non-verbal manner. In this instance, we’re showing you the human (and bovine) stories behind maps.

Because I was drawing everything, there were dozens of unexpected little details that Dave and I had work out - the size of the wagon wheels, period clothing, 17th century Watertown buildings and modern Watertown buildings, etc.

We mentioned a meeting-house being built. As you can see, there’s a cross on the building – churches doubled as meetinghouses at that time.

In addition, during research we found out how the children who herded cattle out to Waltham may have grown up to become the first settlers there, since they were more familiar with the land. This lead to this visual narrative linking the maps of this young boy literally following the footsteps of cattle to grow up and settle in Waltham.

For instance, here, we realized showing a map of the actual cowpaths and a map of modern day corresponding roads was really interesting. This affected where we concentrated research and we also decided to expand the maps on to a second page. (This comic involved at least a dozen drafts.)

So from the earliest coffeehouse meetings between Dave and I, we drew out rough drafts of the comic. This helped to figure out how the visual and prose elements are working together.

So far, this work is essentially what I'd do for any project. Now, for me, the next step would be to write this whole story out with footnotes and the full apparatus. But here, the whole comic has less than 100 words. Instead, a lot of visual information is involved. While the density of information is the same, the presentation is quite different. Here’s Aya to elaborate on this.

Here's a 19th century map, with interesting details.

And here are some footnotes.

These mills on the map show the location of actual mills from the time. This is a nod to Dave’s dissertation on the history of Waltham mills and industry.

Here's a modern map, where we have plotted more of the story.

We also worked with maps to try to visualize and understand these descriptions. Here's a reconstructed map showing the first land grants in Waltham. You can see where we started to trace out landmarks and roads from other sources.

The basic work was the same as any history project as well. We had to develop a story by pulling together different kinds of sources.

At the core, this project has the same goal as any history project. We are trying to explain how things were, how things came about, and how people in the past lived - in this case, we are looking at the story behind maps and developments of roads. So, the basic structure is the same as any history essay. We have our thesis statement, our evidence and explanation, and a conclusion complete with a restatement of the thesis.

So here's a close-up of one of the final pages. You can see the very simple panel layout we chose to show the cowpaths and map information that we figured out.

And as a side note, the cattle at this period were described as stocky and hardy, probably a breed called a Devon. The cattle in the comic reflect this.