Description:
English engraved, watercolor wash (by a contempory hand) map of New England, 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." This detailed pre-Revolutionary map of New England was drawn by the cartographer Braddock Mead (1688?-1757, alias John Green) about 1753, and then engraved and published by Thomas Jefferys (c.1710-1771) in 1755 in London. This version is the Second Edition, 2nd. Issue, imprinted in 1755, but published around 1768. 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 (c.1691-1752) 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 a version by Tobias Lotter in 1776 (HD 56.159). Extending from Long Island to Kennebec Bay in Maine, the map also has two 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:
Green’s map, first issued in 1755, presents a detailed image of the Connecticut River Valley and New England at the outset of the French and Indian War. A little-known map by Boston physician William Douglass served as the model for this map, although it is not mentioned in the list of sources (far right). Douglass compiled his map from local surveys and reports, giving it an accuracy that surpassed any other 18th-century map of the region. A curious feature of Green’s map (not found on that of Douglass) are the many small boxes along the Connecticut River south of Springfield, described in the key as “English habitations.” Nowhere else do these symbols appear, and they give a misleading impression of the Valley’s population density. This copy is the second state of the map, printed in 1768.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+65.224 |
