Your Estate. Who Will Chart Its Course. A Map showing how Property is Distributed when the Owner - a Resident of Massachusetts Leaves No Will.
- Title:
- Your Estate. Who Will Chart Its Course. A Map showing how Property is Distributed when the Owner - a Resident of Massachusetts Leaves No Will.
- Alternate Title:
- Your Estate. Who Will Chart Its Course.
- Collection:
- Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection
- Creator:
- Wood, Stacy H.
- Other Creators:
- Harris Forbes Trust Company, publisher
- Date:
- 1930
- Date 2:
- 2024-04-25
- ID Number:
- 2341.01
- File Name:
- PJM_2341_01.jpg
- Style/Period:
- 1920 - 1939
- Subject:
- Advertising & Promotion
Allegorical
Money & Finance
Pictorial - Measurement:
- 44 x 27 sheet (centimeters, height x width)
- Notes:
- This is a rare example - unique in my experience - of an allegorical map used in advertising or promotion. It begins at the upper left in the "Port of Accumulation," where a ship is loading with cargo. This ship, we are told, "represents your estate. You are its captain and owner, the master of its destiny, piloting it while you live. . . . You have a well-charted route in mind for its disposition to your beneficiaries. But unless this route is plotted through the binding document of your Will, appointing an experienced pilot at the helm to succeed you, the ship of your estate may founder on its voyage and be blown along undesirable courses."
At the center of the map, the ship is beset by storms. "Captain is lost overboard and ship is blown into nearest harbor, the Court." The balance of the map shows five alternative paths of how the Court-appointed administrator will distribute the estate under Massachusetts law, depending on whether the decedent had a surviving spouse, children, etc. The message is clear: the outcome is unlikely to reflect the "well-charted route" for disposition the decedent had in mind. And at the foot of the map is the conclusion: "This map shows the advisability of having an Attorney draw your Will naming therein a permanent Corporate Executor, such as the Harris Forbes Trust Company, to carry out the provisions of your Will for the individual welfare of your beneficiaries."
The mapmaker, Stacy Wood, was a graphic artist well known as an illustrator of children's books. He produced several other pictorial and comic maps, including one for the 1935 Jamboree on the 25th Anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America.
Ocean voyages have often been used in allegorical mapping. See Subjects > Allegorical.
For further information on the Collector’s Notes and a Feedback/Contact Link, see https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/about-collection-personal-statement and https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/feedback-and-contact - Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- For important information about copyright and use, see http://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/copyright.