Description:
German engraved, watercolor wash (by a contemporary hand) map of New England, mounted on cloth attached to wooden rollers, titled: "A MAP of the most INHABITED part of NEW ENGLAND, containing the PROVINCES of MASSACHUSETTS BAY and NEW HAMPSHIRE, with the COLONIES of CONNECTICUT and RHODE ISLAND. Divided into Counties & Townships. The whole composed from Actual Surveys and its Situation adjusted by ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS. Published by TOBIAS CONRAD LOTTER in Augsburg." This detailed pre-Revolutionary map of New England was based a map drawn by Braddock Mead (1688?-1757, alias John Green) about 1753, and then engraved and published by Thomas Jefferys (1720?-1771) in 1755 in London. Although based on the cartography of English mapmakers John Thorton, Philip Lea, and Robert Morden, Mead probably obtained his detailed information from a map by New England historian and physician Dr. William Douglass of Boston, which was engraved by R. W. Seale in London, 1753: "Plan of the British Dominions of New England in North America Composed from actual surveys". The map was copied by several people, including this version by Tobias Lotter in 1776 printed on four separately matted sheets, each 19 3/4 by 21 in. Extending from Long Island to Kennebec Bay in Maine, the map also has two colored inset maps of Boston Harbor and the Boston city plan; and a title cartouche showing the pilgrims' landing at Plymouth welcomed by an Indian, with a ship and tropical palms in the background and a rock labeled "Plymouth MDCXX." in the foreground. English imprints continued being published as late as 1794, but only the early 19th-century work of the Americans, Osgood Carlton, Abel Buell, and Philip Carrigain, Jr., finally replaced Mead's maps.
Label Text:
The little-known 1753 map of New England by Boston physician William Douglass (c. 1691-1752) served as the primary source for John Green’s map. Although Green had access to British government reports and maps such as those in the Board of Trade (some of which are listed on the far right of the map), Douglass consulted numerous local surveys and reports unavailable to a London cartographic publisher. Green’s map, first issued in 1755, presented a detailed image of New England at the outset of the French and Indian War. This is the first medium-scale map of New England to reach a broad European and colonial American audience, and it served as a model for many subsequent maps. A Map of the Most Inhabited Part of New England went through several revisions and printings, including French and German editions, until as late as 1794.
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