THE VANITY OF SONOMA COUNTY’S FIRST HISTORY
On the evening of May 16, 1876, William Colvig rode his horse to the Washoe House in Stony Point. Having spent the day surveying ranches, he was in need of supper and a room. The next morning he traded his tired horse for a new mount, and set off to survey Harrison Mecham’s nearby 10,000-acre ranch, not knowing Mecham wasn’t at home. Like most of his neighbors, he had left for Petaluma to see Montgomery Queen’s Traveling Circus.[1]
Colvig was part of a different traveling show—Thompson & West, publisher of county atlases. A new, mass-market racket, the county atlas appealed to settlers yearning to celebrate their participation in America’s epic westward movement.[2]
Published in a 15 x 18 inch book format, the typical atlas featured more than 100 pages of hand-colored maps and illustrations.[3] Available only by pre-order from door-to-door canvassers, it was priced as a luxury item at $15 ($460 in today’s currency). Subscribers were asked to pay half down and the rest upon delivery, which was usually a year away.[4]
Thompson & West, or T&W as they were known, looked to sell at least 1,500 copies of the Historical Atlas of Sonoma County, generating $22,500 in revenue ($700,000 in today’s currency).[5] Their main targets were the farmers and ranchers whose names were to be featured on the atlas’ maps, along with the size of their landholdings.
Canvassers preyed upon their egos and sense of social status, assuring them nothing better reflected agrarian progress, personal accomplishment, and civic pride than a luxurious atlas. Designed for display on the parlor table, the atlas was an heirloom families would treasure for generations.[6]
Colvig had worked previously for atlas publishers in the Midwest, where the books gained a reputation for being quickly and carelessly assembled, leaving behind duped customers and a flawed record of local landscapes.[7] Reluctant to rejoin the circuit, but in need of money, he agreed to work as a field surveyor for T&W, on the condition he wouldn’t have to double as a canvasser.[8]
After discovering Mecham had gone off to the circus, Colvig rode into Petaluma, where he kept a room at the American Hotel (site of today’s Putnam Plaza). Awaiting him at the hotel was a telegram from T&W’s owner, Thomas H. Thompson, summoning him to the company’s office in San Francisco.[9]
A founder of the county atlas craze, Thompson served in the Union Army as a battle captain and surveyor during the Civil War. After the war, he teamed up with two former army colleagues, Louis H. Everts and Alfred T. Andreas, to revolutionize the mapmaking business. They did so by combining the popular characteristics of the county wall map with illustrations and county histories in a book format.[10]
The three began publishing county atlases in Iowa and Illinois. In addition to ordering copies, subscribers also could purchase a full-page illustration of their farm or business for $145 ($4,400 in today’s currency), a hand-drawn portrait for $100 ($3,000 today), and a biography at two and half cents a word ($1 today).[11]
Farm illustrations included any improvements a farmer envisioned, and omitted anything he didn’t wish to show.
Likewise, subscribers were given the final review of their biographies. Local merchants who endorsed the atlas received free listings in the book’s “business directory.” Newspapers willing to provide free publicity were rewarded with illustrations of their offices in the atlas.[12]
In 1875, Thompson brought his “maps for the masses” craze to California, teaming up with Albert A. West to launch Thompson & West Publishing. Thompson handled the mapping and production, West the histories and biographies.[13]
The two began peddling atlases in Santa Clara, Solano, and Alameda counties. In 1876, they added Sonoma County to the mix. To round out their 12-man crew of canvassers, artists, surveyors, and writers, Thompson reached out to Colvig, who, after working with Thompson in the Midwest, had returned home to Oregon.[14]
Trained as a mapmaker in the Union Army, Colvig was assigned by Thompson to verify and update official surveys of Sonoma County. That included the county’s first comprehensive wall map, created in 1866 by A.B. Bowers.[15] Traveling by horse, Colvig reviewed property lines and mapped out significant topographical features, along with churches, schools, mills, roads, and railroads.[16]
Known for his people skills, Colvig paid ranchers $1 a night ($30 in today’s currency) for supper and lodging. That led to some strange encounters, including the night he spent at the ranch of Dr. J.H. Happy, a spiritualist, whose young son attempted to induce him into a trance by playing a violin made from an old cigar box.[17]
Colvig accompanied Thompson to Santa Rosa to successfully lobby the county Board of Supervisors to adopt the atlas as the county’s official map.[18] They also appealed for free publicity from the publisher of the Sonoma Democrat newspaper, Thomas L. Thompson (no relation to T&W’s Thomas H. Thompson).[19]
He informed them that his brother Bob—Robert Augustus Thompson, Jr., who co-edited the newspaper, had already written a 24,000-word history of Sonoma County the Sonoma Democrat had published the year before.[20]
A positive, reaffirming narrative, Bob’s history sidestepped or downplayed any political, economic, and social divisions in the county’s 26-year old history. Instead, he provided descriptions of the county’s climate, geography, topography, agriculture, and timber. There were also sketches of its milling, mining, and wine interests, and brief histories of each town .
Bob’s format and approach was the same T&W used in their county atlases, indicating he might have anticipated their arrival. To gain the Sonoma Democrat’s support, T&W agreed to license an expanded version of Bob’s history for the atlas, and allow Bob to publish it independently. Bob’s motives for doing so were likely political.[21]
A leader of the Sonoma County Democratic Party, he was planning to run for county clerk in 1877. Authoring the county’s first comprehensive history would not only burnish his credentials, but also make for good publicity.[22]
In August 1877, The Historical Atlas of Sonoma County was delivered to subscribers under the imprint “Thos. H. Thompson & Co.,” presumably because Thompson’s partner West was not involved with the history section.[23]
The book contained 12 colored maps; 15 town and village plats; 120 engraved illustrations of farms, businesses, and buildings; Bob’s history; and five commissioned biographies and portraits of prominent settlers.
The book was met with great acclaim, at least from T&W’s local promoters. Many acknowledged that while it got some details wrong, on the whole it was the most complete effort to date.[24]
There were, however, disappointed subscribers who refused to pay for the balance of their orders. After T&W sued them for payment, a handful countersued, claiming their signatures on the orders had been forged.[25]
Colvig left Sonoma County long before the publication date. Having grown increasingly frustrated with the sketchiness of official surveys in the county’s western region, he returned early to Oregon. Pursuing a new career in the field of law, he was eventually elected district attorney of a district encompassing Jackson, Josephine, Lake, and Klamath counties.[26]
Coinciding with the atlas’ release, Bob became the Democratic Party’s nominee for Sonoma County clerk. He also published his own pamphlet version of the atlas’s history—A Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Sonoma County, for sale in bookstores for $1 ($30 in today’s currency). Shortly after, he was elected to the first of three terms as county clerk. His legacy today is as Sonoma County’s first historian.[27]
While T&W’s atlas provided a sense of stability to Sonoma County residents, its landscape images projecting a spatial permanency rooted in social values of family, community, and commerce, the ephemeral nature of the county atlas itself suggested such stability to be precarious.[28]
By the late 1870s, the novelty of “maps for the masses” began to lose its appeal. Subscription publishers like T&W quickly transitioned to a new model known as the “mug book.” Gone were the maps and illustrations, replaced by commissioned biographies with engraved portraits of their subjects, hence the nickname “mug book.” [29]
Sonoma County’s first mug book, History of Sonoma County, made its appearance in 1880.[30] Written by J.P. Munro-Fraser, it provided a more robust and colorful history than that of the 1877 atlas. However, the book’s main attraction was its 349 commissioned biographies and 67 engraved portraits, comprising more than 300 of its 745 pages.
Written in the laudatory style of a newspaper obituary, the biographies provided valuable information for future genealogists, but were, for historians, riddled with factual errors and errors of omission.
For better or worse, the mug book became the template of the four subsequent Sonoma County histories that followed, three of them written by local newspaper editors—Samuel Cassiday (1889), Tom Gregory (1911), and Ernest Finley (1937) —and one by Bodega school teacher Honoria Tuomey (1926).
The vanity of their attraction meant that for the next half century, the county was periodically flooded with canvassers knocking on doors with offers to publish the resident’s story and portrait in exchange for a fee and a subscription to the county’s new, exciting history.
A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier on February 20, 2026. Special thanks to Tim Colvig for sharing family documents and photos.
******
FOOTNOTES:
[1] William M. Colvig, “Journal for 1876: May 16, 1876,” courtesy of Tim Colvig, Wm. M. Colvig Collection; Ad for Montgomery Queen Circus, Petaluma Argus, May 5, 1876; Mecham acreage cited in Historical Atlas Map of Sonoma County (Thompson & West, 1877), p. 99.
[2] Michael P. Conzen, “The County Landownership Map in America: Its Commercial Development and Social Transformation 1814-1939,” Imago Mundi, Vol. 36 (1984), p. 29
[3] Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, “Picturing Progress: Assessing the Nineteenth-Century Atlas-Map Bonanza,” Michigan Historical Review, Vol. 30, No. 2, Fall 2004), pp. 194, 198.
[4] Walter A. Friedman, Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), pps. 37-39; Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, p. 169; Note on pricing: Cheryl Lyon-Jenness notes atlas books in Michigan in the early 1870s were priced at $9 a copy. In 1876, Sonoma County’s Board of Supervisors approved the purchase of 15 copies of the Sonoma County atlas for $225, or $15 each. They approved an additional acquisition of one copy in 1877 for $15 (“Board of Supervisors,” Sonoma Democrat, March 11, 1876; “Board of Supervisors,” Petaluma Argus, September 21, 1877; “Where the Money Goes,” PetalumaArgus, November 16, 1877). The Alameda County atlas, published by Thompson & West in 1878, sold for $20, but at 170 pages, was 66 pages longer than the Sonoma County atlas (“A County Atlas Map,” Oakland Daily Transcript, February 25, 1877).
[5] “A County Atlas Map,” Oakland Daily Transcript, February 25, 1877; Conzen, Agricultural History, p. 119. Note: Conzen cites the sales goal was generally 1,000 copies, but the Oakland Daily Transcript estimates the number at 1,500.
[6] Michael P. Conzen, “Landownership Maps and County Atlases,” Agricultural History, Vol. 58, No. 2 (April, 1984), p. 119; “Minnesota Atlas,” Freeborn County Standard, Minnesota, April 30, 1874; Bates Harrington, How ‘Tis Done: A Thorough Ventilation of the Numerous Schemes Conducted By Wandering Canvassers Together with the Various Advertising Dodges for the Swindling of the Public (Chicago: Fidelity Publishing Co., 1879), pp. 22, 27; Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, pp. 194, 198.
[7] “Minnesota Atlas,” Freeborn County Standard, Minnesota, April 30, 1874; Harrington, pps. 42-43, 79-80, 87-88.
[8] Colvig Journal, April 23, 1876. Note: T&W agreed to pay him $100 per month ($3,000 in today’s currency) plus expenses.
[9] Colvig Journal, May 18-22, 1876. Note: in 1877, T&W moved their offices to Oakland.
[10] Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, pps. 171-172.
[11] Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, p. 198; Conzen, Agricultural History, p.119.
[12] Harrington, p. 40; Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, pp. 180, 196, 198.
[13] David F. Myrick, Introduction to the 1958 Reprinted Edition of Thompson & West’s History of Nevada, 1881 (Howell-North, Berkeley, CA, 1958), p. h; Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, p. 168.
[14] “Minnesota Atlas,” Freeborn County Standard, Minnesota, April 30, 1874; “County News,” Vallejo Chronicle, September 29, 1876; “Proposed New Maps,” Oakland Tribune, January 25, 1877.
[15] Charles Sweet, “The Judge Colvig Story,” Table Rock Sentinel, Southern Oregon Historical Society newsletter, September 1986; “Bowers Map of Sonoma County,” Petaluma Argus, December 13, 1866; William Walsh, “The Story of an Inventor,” Overland Monthly, January-June, 1897, pp. 166-179; Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, p. 182; Colvig Journal, April 23, 1876; Note: Colvig reviewed property lines and mapped out significant topographical features, along with churches, schools, mills, roads, and railroads.
[16] Colvig Journal, April 23, 1876; Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, p. 182.
[17] “A Friendly Call,” Petaluma Argus, November 6, 1874; Colvig Journal, April 23, May 3, July 14, August 14, 1876. Note: Colvig ended up working on the atlas for four and a half months, from May 3rd to August 14th.
[18] Harrington, p. 32; “New Advertisements: To the Citizens of Sonoma County,” Petaluma Argus, February 18, 1876; “Sonoma County Atlas,” Petaluma Argus, May 11, 1877; “Card from T.H. Thompson,” Petaluma Courier, August 16, 1877; Note: the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors agreed to purchase 15 copies of the atlas for $225, or $15 each (“Board of Supervisors,” Sonoma Democrat, March 11, 1876; “Board of Supervisors,” Petaluma Argus, September 21, 1877).
[19] Note: Thomas L. Thompson was commonly referred to in newspaper articles of the time as “Tom.” Likewise, Robert A. Thompson went by “Bob” (“Nine Men Have Had Part in Building P.D. in the Last 71 Yrs.,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, October 28, 1928).
[20] ”The County of Sonoma: A Brief Historical Sketch,” Sonoma Democrat, January 2, 1875.
[21] “Nailed to the Counter,” Sonoma Democrat, June 19, 1877; “A Kindly Recommendation,” Sonoma Democrat, June 19, 1877; “Sonoma County,” Petaluma Argus, September 21, 1877; “Now Ready,” Petaluma Courier, October 4, 1877.
[22] “Democrats,” Petaluma Argus, June 25, 1875.
[23] “Thompson’s Sonoma Atlas,” Petaluma Courier, August 16, 1877; Historical Atlas of Sonoma County (Oakland, CA: Thompson & Co., 1877), p. 3; Note: Thompson & West published 14 county atlases and histories between 1876 and 1884, after which their partnership was dissolved, and Thompson moved to Tulare, where he became a real estate broker; the imprint Thompson & Co. published three historical atlas map books on its own—Sonoma County (1877) while Thompson was still in partnership with West, and Fresno County (1891) and Tulare County (1892) after their partnership ended (Introduction to the 1958 Edition of Thompson & West’s History of Nevada, 1881 (Howell-North, Berkeley, CA, 1958, p. I).
[24] “Board of Supervisors,” Oakland Daily Times, January 29, 1878. Note: Facing criticism for their county atlas, officials in Alameda County issued a statement acknowledging the atlas was not entirely correct in some of its details, but was more complete than any previous map.
[25]“Thompson’s Sonoma Atlas,” Petaluma Courier, August 16, 1877; “Card from T.H. Thompson,” Petaluma Courier, August 16, 1877; “The Forgery Case,” Sonoma Democrat, December 1, 1877; “County News,” Vallejo Evening Chronicle, December 7, 1877; “The Atlas Suits,” Oakland Tribune, November 15, 1878.
[26] Colvig Journal, June 14, June 23-24, August 14-16, 1876; “Autobiography of Wm. M. Colvig, 1928,” Oregon Pioneer Association, courtesy of Tim Colvig.
[27] “Proceedings of the Convention,” Petaluma Courier, July 18, 1877; “Sonoma County,” Petaluma Argus, September 21, 1877; Note: R.A. Thompson’s pamphlet, Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Sonoma County (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts, 1877), was published by Thomas H. Thompson’s former atlas partner in Illinois, implying that T.H. Thompson might have arranged for its publication.
[28] Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, pp. 196, 210.
[29] Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, p. 208; Rhonda Frevert, “Mug Books,” Commonplace: Journal of Early American Life, Issue 3.1, October 2002, https://commonplace.online/article/mug-books/
[30] “The History of Sonoma County,” Petaluma Courier, February 3, 1880; J.P. Munro-Fraser, History of Sonoma County (San Francisco, CA: Alley, Bowen & Co., 1880).