For a more optimal view of this StoryMap, please visit this link to the ArcGIS site.
When I was finishing my master’s degree, I took the maps I used for my thesis and started making a StoryMap with them. Though I didn’t finish it at the time, I kept the project and the data saved, always meaning to come back to it. Now, almost two years later, I have, and with fresh eyes regarding Digital Humanities and deep mapping.
This project started off as just mapping the women that Nancy Towle, an itinerant female preacher, traveled and worked with during the 1820s and 1830s. In some ways, it still is that. However, I have sought to do something a static map cannot do. By bringing together the quantitative data of where Towle traveled, the places and distances she covered, and the narrative of her life and her friendships with women mentioned in her memoir, we can learn more about other women who preached and itinerated. Towle worked with over twenty women, many of whom left behind few or no records of their lives. Even if faint, tracing their record in Towle’s memoir sheds light on these women, and the expansive network they worked within.
