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Scrapbook Documenting the Mexican Border Service Campaigns of 1916-1917 with an Unrecorded Map of the Campaign in Hidalgo County in 1916

1917 · réf. List2530 — VP 1917. Scrapbook measuring 15 ½ x 10 ½ inches. With forty leaves most with newspaper clippings and varied ephemera attached. Boards detached contents generally fine. Laid in is a blueprint map entitled Map of Part of Hidalgo County Texas Showing Line of March in my Mexican Border Service 1916. Made from Survey Notes taken on the march by Corp. C.A. Rice 74 Inf. N.G.U.S. Buffalo N.Y. Armory. Map measuring 33 ½ x 14 ¾ inches irregularly shaped and apparently complete. Very Good. A scrapbook documenting the military service of 1st Sergeant Samuel Gaffney of the 74th National Guard New York in the Mexican Border Service. Gaffney documents the campaign in great detail through printed matter - with each of the forty leaves containing material affixed including panoramic photographs advertisements from local businesses along the routes programs from entertainment offered to the troops military orders and official correspondence and many affixed newspaper articles and photographs. The scrapbook is most notable for the inclusion of an unrecorded map by Charles A. Rice the Buffalo native who would eventually map the campaign in larger fashion in a map entitled Map Showing Lines and March and Border Patrols in my Mexican Border Service 1916-1917. The map here just showing the route through Hidalgo County is unrecorded. The larger map - which was produced as souvenirs for the other members of the 74th - is quite scarce as well with five copies known to exist per OCLC with two different numbers. This blueprint map which appears to be complete cartographically and missing only the ornamental border on one portion shows the route taken early in the campaign in 1916. The Buffalo native Rice 1885-1931 who would eventually settle in Texas after the conflict also wrote a history of the 74th during the campaign. Rice published the maps and memoir himself. The map shows the route in great detail showing the location of wells farms roads and identifying landowners. Water quality and abundance is understandably a common theme in Rice’s notes. Some notes show the location of bandits smugglers and the like. We find no other examples of blueprint maps by Rice. Other highlights from the scrapbook include seven panoramic photographs of the 74th encamped at Pharr; a broadside advertisement for the shop of Agustin Acevedo in Pharr listing prices of goods; a handbill advertising the 74th’s Minstrels and Great Entertainment show on September 16 1916; an advertisement for a production entitled Glorious Liberty at the National Theatre in Pharr; two circulars instructing troop movement issued by Headquarters Brownsville District; several postcards with songs about the campaign; several snapshots; a mounted albumen photograph of troops at rest with the notation “Corp Frederick Paid” verso; a typed poem entitled “Home Again” and a notebook page describing his activities from January 1917 onward; and a thanksgiving menu for 1916 for the holiday spent at Pharr. The remainder of the scrapbook is composed of affixed newspaper clippings which provide extensive information on the 74th collected in a single volume. Overall a significant scrapbook with much information to glean for students of the 74th’s activities with the map providing a unique cartographic reference of the early days of the campaign. unknown