The Map Thief (38 page)

“Though I may be an ‘expert’ in cartography”
:
E. Forbes Smiley III, Affidavit in Support of Order to Show Cause to Vacate Default Judgment, Jose Porrja v. E. Forbes Smiley III, Supreme Court of the State of New York, Index No. 25040/90.

“I can’t say it never happened”
:
Building superintendent (name withheld by request), 16 East Seventy-Ninth Street, New York, New York, interview with the author.

friends said Smiley grew despondent
:
Slater and Statt interviews.

You do this alone
:
Smiley interview.

friends and family urged him to cut his losses
:
Ibid.

Baynton-Williams
:
Cedrid Pulford, “Roger Baynton-Williams obituary: key figure in the growing popularity of antiquarian maps,”
The Guardian
(UK), August 18, 2011; Kim Martineau, “From life among the elite to charges of theft,”
Hartford Courant,
September 25, 2005. (Baynton-Williams declined to comment directly on his relationship with Smiley.)

sold Smiley several maps
 . . . Nicholas Scull:
Arader interview.

Smiley signed a note
 . . . attorney fees:
W. Graham Arader III v. E. Forbes
Smiley III, New York County Supreme Court, filed April 16, 1990, index no. 18994/89.

took out a mortgage
:
Mortgage, E. Forbes Smiley III and Fleet Bank, Piscataquis County Registry of Deeds, filed May 26, 1989, Doc. #2962 Book 725, 95.

Creditors began suing him
:
Cosmos Communications
v.
E. Forbes Smiley III, New York County District Court, filed February 7, 1991, index no. 54546/89. Judgment: $3,535.

IRS hit him with liens
:
Federal tax lien, $3,233, case no. 00000004430, July 17, 1990; federal tax lien, $1,689, case no. 00000901490, filed December 11, 1990.

failed to pay the bill
 . . . to a burglar alarm company:
Holmes Protection of NY Inc.
v
. E. Forbes Smiley III, New York County District Court, filed April 25, 1990, index no. 12807/90. Judgment: $9,982.

dispute with a Spanish map collector
:
José Porrúa
v.
E. Forbes Smiley III, New York County Supreme Court, filed March 28, 1991, index no. 25040/90. Judgment: $34,682.

Alex Krieger
:
Krieger interview; Krieger and Cobb,
Mapping Boston,
viii; William Finnegan, “A theft in the library,”
The New Yorker,
October 17, 2005.

“I thought he was slimy”
:
Krieger interview.

calling around to other dealers
:
Krieger interview; Finnegan, “theft in the library.”

Leventhal hadn’t been too concerned
 . . . parted ways:
Krieger interview; Kenneth Nebenzahl, interview with the author; Krieger, e-mail to the author, December 2, 2013; Smiley,
Early Cartography,
“60. Norman & Coles”; John Norman, “An accurate map of the four New England states,” 1785, Boston Public Library, Mapping Boston Collection.

remembered his falling-out
 . . . “nothing to do with me”:
Smiley interview.

gradually they parted ways
:
Smiley and Krieger interviews.

Slaughter
 . . . assemble a collection:
Judith Doolin Spikes, “Larchmont man leaves legacy of maps, atlases to NYC library,”
Daily Times
(New Rochelle), September 20, 1997.

“finding the really nice things”
:
Jane Margolies, “Maps that aren’t for getting somewhere,”
The New York Times,
March 29, 1990.

Howard Welsh
:
Helen Dalrymple, “Collector enriches LC’s map holdings,”
LC Information Bulletin,
1994; Alice C. Hudson, “Obituary: Howard Welsh,”
SLA Geography and Map Division Bulletin,
no. 163 (March 1991); Smiley interview; Hudson interview.

Smiley showed up at the auction
:
Catalog, Sotheby’s New York, June 13, 1991.

among other maps
:
Lawrence H. Slaughter Collection (LHS) archives, New York Public Library, #1, 4, 5, 10.

acquiring
 . . . John Seller map of New Jersey:
LHS archives, #234.

another buyer picked up a group of four books
:
American Book Prices Current:
“English Pilot, 1713–68, 4 vol. Sotheby’s New York, June 13, 1991, lot 288, $15,000.”

buy a pair of maps
:
LHS archives, #1, 4.

Thomas Jefferson map of Virginia (1787)
:
Jane Hallisey, “Thomas Jefferson,
cartographer: a father’s legacy to his Renaissance son,”
Mercator’s World
1, no. 3 (1996).

Smiley purchased a copy in 1991
:
LHS archives, #100.

adding it to three others
:
LHS archives, #99, 101, 102.

The English Pilot, The Fourth Book
from 1689
:
“The Pierre S. DuPont III collection of navigation, voyages, cartography and literature of the sea,” Christie’s New York, October 8, 1991, Lot #101; LHS archives, #312.

Atlas Maritimus
from 1682
:
LHS archives, #334.

1713 edition of
:
The English Pilot
LHS archives, #324.

carto-bibliography of New England
:
Mercator Society Steering Committee, minutes of the meetings of May 18, 1991; January 14, 1992; and February 11, 1993; Barbara McCorkle, draft introduction to “The Printed Charts of New England 1614–1800”; all from NYPL Map Division archives.

Smiley and Baynton-Williams got into a dispute
:
Hudson interview. (Baynton-Williams declined to comment.)

IRS filing a lien
:
Federal tax lien, $21,388, March 31, 1992; federal tax lien, $25,374, September 7, 1994.

largest town in Piscataquis County
:
Helen Kelly, “Sebec Village reading room,”
The Piscataquis Observer,
October 21, 1998.

population of more than a thousand
:
“Sebec, Piscataquis County, Maine,” compiled from History of Piscataquis County, by Amasa Loring, c. 1880, Three Rivers Community, http://www.trcmaine.org/community/sebec.

dropped to only six hundred
:
US Census Bureau, 2007–2011 American Community Survey, https://www.census.gov/acs/www/.

second-poorest county in Maine
:
Anne W. Acheson,
Poverty in Maine,
Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, University of Maine, Orono, 2010. (Washington County is the poorest.)

most sparsely populated areas east of the Mississippi
:
Sarah Goodyear, “Can one of Maine’s emptiest counties become an urbanist paradise?”
The Atlantic Cities,
February 2012, http://www.theatlanticcities.com/design/2012/02/can-one-maines-emptiest-counties-become-urbanist-paradise/1154/.

“Big house, little house”
:
Thomas C. Hubka,
Big House, Little House, Back House Barn: The Connected Farm Buildings of New England
, Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2004.

five-over-five Colonial
 . . . rebuilt the chimney:
“Sebec Lake Colonial” (real estate brochure), George Applegate, Trimble Private Brokerage, Bangor, Maine; house tour, July 4, 2013, by Andrew and April Taylor, 11 Cove Road, Sebec, Maine.

rustic, country aesthetic
:
VHS video by Scott Slater, August 18, 1993.

map of Sebec Lake
:
“Sebec Lake, Maine,” for Dover-Foxcroft Chamber of Commerce, by Prentiss and Carlisle Co, Inc., Bangor, Maine, May 24, 1962.

video from August 18, 1993
:
Slater video.

Smiley doted on the children
 . . . stories into the night:
Scott Slater interview; Felicity Slater interview.

Boys’ Weekend
 . . . none of his friends knew:
Scott Slater interview; Statt interview; Bob von Elgg, interview with the author; Scott Slater, journal, October 1997; “Boys’ Weekend, October 8–12, 1998, Reading Dinner Itinerary”; Bob von Elgg, “Sebec Journal,” 1998.

“diamonds from piles of coal”
:
Newman interview.

“At an auction, it’s fifty-fifty”
:
Barry Ruderman, interview with the author.

“a lot of money out there”
:
Ruderman interview.

“take out some of the competition”
:
Newman interview.

bidding more on behalf of Barry MacLean
:
Arader interview; Reese interview; Newman interview.

“Forbes didn’t like going to auctions”
:
Arader interview.

C
HAPTER
7

Gilbert Bland
 . . . got into the map trade:
Harvey,
Island of Lost Maps,
25–26, 220–221.

Selling to other dealers
:
Ibid., 225.

Single-edged razor blade
:
Ibid., 101.

Ortelius, Hondius, and Mercator
:
Ibid., 279.

day in December 1995
 . . . worth around $2,000:
Ibid., 10–15; Miles Harvey, “Mr. Bland’s evil plot to control the world,”
Outside,
June 1997.

library let him off
:
Harvey,
Island of Lost Maps,
81–84, 88–89.

contained page after page
:
Ibid., 89–93.

seventeen university libraries
:
Ibid., 112.

campus cop
 . . . tracked him to his home:
Ibid., 175–177.

turned himself in
:
Frank Roylance, “Map theft suspect in custody; hearing of warrants, Fla. man turns self in,”
The Baltimore Sun,
January 5, 1996.

storage locker in Boca Raton
:
“Feds recover 150 maps, documents taken from university libraries; some items may have been stolen from UNC, Duke,”
The Chapel Hill Herald
(Durham, NC), March 2, 1996; Chris O’Brien and Todd Nelson, “Man charged in thefts of rare maps from UNC-CH,”
The News and Observer
(Raleigh, NC), March 5, 1996.

a hundred more
 . . . a half-million dollars:
Harvey, “Mr. Bland’s evil plot to control the world.”

“I was a real victim”
:
Ibid., 132.

“I’ll run over him—but in a nice way”
:
Ibid., 133.

four of the affected institutions
 . . . $100,000 in restitution:
Ibid., 313–314.

Some seventy of the maps were never claimed
:
Ibid., 338.

“less of a con man than an un man”
:
Ibid., 225.

“Mr. Bland was bland”
:
Ibid., 225.

maps were closely guarded secrets
:
Brown,
Story of Maps,
7–9; Harvey,
Island of Lost Maps,
142–145.

Cantino chart
:
Lester,
Fourth Part of the World,
338–355; Harvey,
Island of Lost Maps,
145–149.

Dutch East India Company’s “Secret Atlas”
:
Brown,
Story of Maps,
148–149.

handsomely rewarded privateers
:
Ibid., 9.

map dealers stole from one another as well
:
Ibid., 169–170.

Michael Huback and Stephen Chapo
:
The New York Times,
March 17, 1973; Harvey,
Island of Lost Maps,
157–158.

Charles Lynn Glaser
:
Barnaby Conrad III, “Map quest,”
Forbes,
November 7, 2011; Harvey,
Island of Lost Maps,
159–161.

Andy Antippas
:
“Professor sentenced in map thefts,”
The Hour
(Norwalk, CT), November 21, 1978; Emily Rose, “Tulane professor steals Yale maps,”
Yale Daily News,
November 29, 1978; Emily Rose, “Thief gets year in jail,”
Yale Daily News,
January 15, 1979; Petula Dvorak, “N.O. doctor, art dealer held in cemetery thefts,”
The
Times-Picayune
(New Orleans), November 5, 1998; Patricia Leigh Brown, “New Orleans grave theft: nothing’s sacred,”
The New York Times,
February 16, 1999.