This hand-drawn map from 1864 appears to have come from the hand of a man named S.T. Risler, who served in Walker's Texas Division during the Civil War. Walker's Texas Divison was the "only Confederate group of troops from a single state." Named for John George Walker, the group's second commanding officer, the division fought in battles west of the Mississippi (called the "Trans-Mississippi Department"). They tended to be successful in their battles but their engagements ultimately didn't matter after July 4, 1863, when the Union army took Vicksburg and thereby controlled the Mississippi River.
I took a small part from map of the extreme southwestern corner of Arkansas and northeastern corner of Texas to show you, because it's the first contemporary map I've come across (from what I remember, anyway) that shows the location of Rondo in today's Miller County, Arkansas. For a brief moment, Rondo held the Arkansas state archives after they were removed from Little Rock to Washington (Hempstead County) and then, further south, to avoid complete surrender and destruction by the Union army. Rondo is on the road that linked Fulton to the Sulphur River just south of Boston (Bowie County, Texas). The division took this road from Texas into Arkansas in 1862. By 1864, they engaged with the U.S. Army south of Shreveport at Mansfield (DeSoto Parish, Louisiana).
This rare map of southwestern Arkansas during the Civil War is for sale via raremaps.com for the low (ha ha) price of $9,200. https://www.raremaps.com/gallery/detail/90667/walkers-texas-division-map-of-la-ark-designed-to-poin-risler
Comentarios