Nothing remains of Ridge Hill Farm, once an 800-acre estate in Needham, Massachusetts. The only reminder is a street name in neighbouring Wellesley. Yet once it was the Xanadu of sewing-machine magnate W.E. Baker. One fine summer day in July 1875, Ridge Hill Farms hosted one of the grandest parties the area had ever seen.  

Massachusetts governor William J. Gaston and Boston mayor Samuel C. Cobb were among the many dignitaries, foreign and domestic, attending Baker’s fête champêtre, which served a double purpose: it commemorated the centennial of the Battle of Bunker Hill, fought nearby; and it was the Corner-Stone Party for a 'Sanitary Piggery', one that Baker believed would inaugurate a filth-free future for the whole hog-rearing industry. As the patriotic coincided with the pig-centric, each of the 2.500 guests received a copy of this peculiar map of the United States as a ‘good cheer souvenir’ of the event. 

The map’s rather long-winded full title is: THIS PORCINEOGRAPH is copied from the Census Surveys of 1870, adding only 3 feet of territory (?) resting on Cuba, Mexico and Sandwich Islands, and the Hydro-Cephalus from Canada. Congressional Legislation is required to PERFECT this GEHOGRAPHY. 

Produced by the Forbes Lithograph Manufacturing Company of Boston, this must be the world’s finest - and possibly only - example of sustained porcineography (1). 

The familiar shape of America’s 48 contiguous states is shadowed by the silhouette of a trotting porker. The bristles on its back peek out over the long, straight border with Canada. Maine figures as its eastbound snout, its right eye is placed between Lakes Erie and Ontario to coincide with the Niagara Falls & Cataract (2). A giant pig’s ear covers much of Michigan and Wisconsin, in imitation of the Great Lakes.

Two legs of the continent-sized beast are coterminous with actual geographic features: its right front leg, raised, is the Florida peninsula, its right back leg, touching putative ground, is Baja California, the Mexican peninsula. An imaginary left back leg is reaching across the Pacific to step on the islands of Hawaii, or, as they were then also commonly referred to, the Sandwich Islands (bacon sandwiches, by the look of these). Its imaginary front left companion rests on a sausage-shaped Cuba (3). The state of Washington has sprouted a bristly, curly tail wrapped around Alasqueue.

The map itself is surrounded by a herd of pigs. Some are sitting in mock-allegorical poses atop it, copying the personifications of continents or countries on other maps. The main trio is labelled, left to right, Hog & Ham & Pork. Hog is holding a plate of shrimp and what appears to be a palm tree. Ham is emblazoned with a patriotic slogan (4) and holding an eagle’s nest containing a young chick and some yet to be hatched eggs. Pork is preparing a bean-based condiment by pouring brain sauce into it.

Other swine are running right around the map, each accompanied by the name, coat of arms and pork-based specialty of each American state (5). That list reads like a menu of lost regional dishes - some perhaps mercifully so. Included are such colourful recipes as: