A MAP of the most INHABITED part of NEW ENGLAND, containing the PROVINCES of MASSACHUSETS BAY and NEW HAMPSHIRE, with the COLONIES of KONEKTIKUT AND RHODE ISLAND. Divided into Counties and Townships: The whole composed of Actual Surveys and its situation adjusted by ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS.

Description

This is the exceedingly rare first state of one of the most significant and iconic American maps ever produced. It was one of the first large-format regional maps of America and was the most comprehensively researched and detailed map of contemporary New England. It is an excellent example, with strong margins and original outline color.

This map is admired by collectors, curators, and experts alike for its historical importance and aesthetic qualities. It stands alongside two other fundamental maps published in 1755: John Mitchell’s A Map of British and French Dominions in North America…, and A General Map of the Middle British Colonies, in America…, by Lewis Evans.

Remarkably, some of the events depicted on the map were just one month old at the time of publication, demonstrating a dynamic era in which military reports and plans traveled from the American battlefield to eastern ports, across the Atlantic by ship, and on to London to be engraved with incredible speed.

 

Census and Publication History

This map was compiled by Braddock Mead (aka John Green) for engraver and publisher Thomas Jefferys. It was published in London on November 29th, 1755, as a separately issued engraving on four sheets.

Events of the 1750s in North America occurred at such a rapid pace that a revised version soon was necessary, and a second state was published only four years after the first. While the differences in the two states may seem obscure, experts understand that they are an important reflection of different points in the course of the French and Indian War. The map was then extensively altered and re-engraved for a new edition, which was published by Thomas Jefferys in his 1768 atlas General Topography of North America. It immediately became the standard reference for mapmakers, soldiers, and statesmen alike, and was reissued repeatedly well into the 1790s. By the time new maps were drawn up after Independence, the political landscape had changed so dramatically that regional mapping was largely abandoned in favor of mapping the new States individually.

Examples of this 1755 edition are found in the British Library, the Library of Congress, the Newberry Library, the William Clements Library, the Osher Map Library, and the Sächsische Landesbibliothek-Staats-und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden.

 

 

Context and Scope

The map depicts a stretch of coastline spanning from the Damariscotta River in the north to Long Island and the Hudson River delta in the south. It reflects the best state of knowledge at the time. It was issued in 1755, at the height of British colonial rule and the initial stages of the French and Indian War (1754-63).

This masterwork encapsulates the prowess of British power in North America before the Revolution. It was crucially influential in how its audience in Great Britain perceived the American colonies and made a powerful claim to further British territorial interests on the continent. What we know now, but few understood then, is that this map reflected the height of Britain’s American empire but also the cusp of its collapse.

 

 

The Crown Point Campaign

While differences between the two states may seem obscure, scholars understand that they are an essential reflection of different points during the French and Indian War. Nowhere is this case more evident than the documentation of the Crown Point Campaign, which is dramatically mapped on our map but lacking on the second state. The campaign featured the first major hero of the war, General William Johnson, who led a force of four thousand men recruited from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and New York. He was charged with attacking the French stronghold at Crown Point, Fort Frederik, from which the French controlled Lake Champlain and launched incursions into what the British considered their territory.

Johnson’s second in command led the first division up the Hudson River starting in mid-July 1755. They built or refurbished a series of forts and storehouses along the river, including Fort Hardy at Saratoga (depicted but not named on the map), ‘Lidius or Nicholson’s Fort’ (today known as Fort Miller), and Fort Lyman, a log fort that was shortly after that renamed Fort Edward. The latter two forts were located at strategic portages connected to the Hudson: carrying places indicated on the map link Fort Miller to Fort Ann on the banks of Wood Creek and Fort Lyman to Lac Saint Sacrement (Schwartz 1994: 59-60).

In mid-August, Johnson set out across the route from Fort Lyman and camped on the southern shore of Lac Saint Sacrement with about two thousand men. He renamed it Lake George in honor of his king and planned to sail down to Ticonderoga and then attack Fort Frederik. He also began constructing a new fort, Fort Henry, on the lake’s southern shore. In response, the French commander, Marshal Ludwig August Dieskau, reinforced Fort Frederik and ordered the construction of a new fort on the promontory at Ticonderoga, Fort Carillon. Our map depicts these locations as camps; the second state shows them as completed forts.

On September 5th, Dieskau led a small force up Wood Creek, intending to march on Fort Lyman. When he learned from a prisoner that the British were already camped at the lake, he devised an ambush and attacked. This attack was the first phase of the Battle of Lake George and is marked on our map with a battleground symbol that carries the date September 7th, 1755, just two months before the publication of our map. The English suffered heavy losses and retreated to their encampment, which had been turned into a makeshift defensive position using trees and overturned wagons (Schwartz 1994: 59-60). Johnson then led a successful counterattack, forcing a French retreat.

The Battle of Lake George was one of the instigating factors accelerating the French and Indian War, which broke out in full the following year. General Johnson’s victory over the French sparked public interest in the American colonies and their frontiers. This interest could be translated directly into sales for the savvy publisher with the right platform and product. Only one month had passed from the formal announcement of the British victory at Lake George to the publication of Mead’s map. Including a detailed plan of Fort Frederik and mapping critical places related to the battle, it spoke directly to the growing public interest in the American theatre of war. It also underscored just how accurate and up-to-date this map was.

The second state omits General Johnson’s and the French camps, as well as the battlefield marker and date. By its publication in 1759, events of the intervening four years had shifted the situation at Lake George. The siege of Fort Henry in 1757 and the Battle of Carillon at Ticonderoga in 1758 were both major French victories. Thus, the mapmakers no longer sought to highlight the area, intent as they were on promoting British interests.

 

A Cornerstone Map for New England

This map represents the early formative period of America: before the Revolutionary War but well after generations of settlement had established firm regional identities. Within the densely settled regions along the coast, the variegated status of what would soon become the individual States stands out clearly. While Massachusetts and New Hampshire are denoted as provinces, Konnektikut and Rhode Island are identified as colonies, whereas southern Rhode Island is recorded as Providence plantation. Yet despite these differences in status, the regional borders are drawn up clearly in these areas, denoting a well-established consensus on the subdivision of land. Further inland, however, the consensus lessens, so much so that some borders are deliberately omitted (e.g. between New Hampshire and New York).

The fluidity of some colonial borders in the first half of the 18th century is attested by the boundary between Connecticut and New York. A line of text reads: “The Land inclosed between the double Boundary Lines is the Oblong of 69,000 Acres granted by Konekticut to New York.” This caption refers to an agreement between the two colonies in which New York was granted a strip of land, known as the ‘Oblong,’ in exchange for the previously granted Connecticut panhandle. After a final survey, Connecticut formally signed the Oblong agreement in May 1731, ending a long-standing territorial dispute.

 

 

Conflict with Indigenous peoples is evident from the map’s annotations, which set out frontier lines between settlers and Native American tribes. For example, south of Sunape Pond, two rows of land plots are labeled: “A double Line of Towns for a Frontier against Indians.” Beyond these lines is the wilderness, though this too belongs to the Crown, as an inscription between Lake George and Sunape Pond will have us understand: “Wilderness Lands of the Crown not yet appropriated.”

However, the real enemies in this dramatic depiction are the French, who, despite being appreciably outnumbered in population size, were expanding their territories and catchment areas through alliances with native tribes. Several French settlements are accompanied by the descriptor “a French Incroachment.” Fort Frederik is prominent at the southern tip of Lake Iroquois (just north of Ticonderoga). Even though the fort is marked on the main map, it was deemed worthy of a detailed inset following the British-French battle at Lake George. Located in the chart’s upper left corner, this is one of only two insets on the map, the other being a detailed plan of Boston Harbor. The apparent discrepancy in importance between the most important Atlantic port in New England and a relatively obscure French fortress in the interior wilderness speaks volumes as to the commercial aims of this map as a politicized, if not political, document.

The inset of Boston Harbor includes all the islands and shoals, as well as the many smaller ports frequented in the bay. The need for this inset is obvious: Despite being the largest port in New England, access was not straightforward, and navigating the bay required both skill and knowledge of local conditions. Consequently, Mead used the fourth book of the reliable navigational atlas, The English Pilot (1706), as his starting point for depicting Boston Harbor. His inset included many soundings and is headed by a caption that stresses reliability: A Plan of Boston Harbor from an Accurate Survey.

 

A Famous Cartouche

Undoubtedly, this map was a showpiece: a visually impressive opus meant to captivate imaginations and inspire awe. The map has a consistent and crisp aesthetic, but nowhere are the artistic ambitions more apparent than in the allegorical cartouche that dominates the bottom of the map. One scholar remarks that the artistry of the cartouche marks maps such as this as “…furniture, not residents of library shelves” (Edney 2003: 162). Framed by swirling arabesques and crowned by the map’s lengthy title, the central image is William Bradford and the pilgrims arriving in America. With the Mayflower proudly anchored in the bay, we see the European pilgrims engage with the local population, who present the newcomers with animal pelts. As if to ensure that there was no doubt what this image depicted, the group is flanked by a large rock marked ‘Plymouth MDCXX.’

The cartouche was most likely an addendum by Thomas Jefferys, a highly skilled engraver. It is an essential compositional element in the map in that it visualizes British claims. There is the recognition that comes with being first. As the Mayflower settlers were English, the Crown felt it could legitimately lay claim to the entire territory of New England. French “encroachments” were, in other words, both immoral and unlawful. Including pelts in the image makes the Crown’s interest in her colonies quite explicit: colonies were primarily a locus for lucrative trade.

Another aim of the cartouche imagery is to juxtapose the Mayflower’s arrival with the complex and developed New England depicted on the map. This composition captures the impressive development that New England has undergone since the landing at Plymouth Rock. As if to say, not only did we come first, but we have been diligent and dutiful in building up this land, so it must be ours. This elegant yet plain symbolism is emblematic of the artistic genius that permeates the Jefferys maps compiled by Mead.

 

The Missing Reference

Mead drew directly on Dr. William Douglass’ Plan of the British dominions of New England in North America, also published in London in 1755. When Douglass died in 1752, the rights were left to his nephew, who saw the potential for commercial success in his uncle’s map and immediately sought to publish it. It took three years to bring it to fruition, and it never made much of a splash, but Douglass had compiled a chart unlike any map of New England that had been previously executed. Mead knew this, and even though both maps came out the same year, he had been aware of Douglass’s work for some time.

The exact degree and nature of Mead’s access to Douglass’ data remain obscure. Both men were highly active in cartographic circles, where findings were compared and manuscript maps shared. Douglass spent many years accumulating and compiling his data, often in a public manner, and Mead followed his progress carefully. Douglass was keenly interested in promulgating New England’s distinctiveness from the other American colonies and tried to incorporate this distinctiveness into his map. This suddenly became an ideal template for Mead to work from in the context of rising tensions over the American colonies.

The omission of Douglass from the list of sources is suspect. Even though Mead’s map is hardly a copy of Douglass’s, it does rather disingenuously misrepresent its sources by citing a non-extant source for Connecticut instead of Douglass’ map, which was used (Edney 2003: 159). That said, Mead significantly improved the map, for example, by including county lines, updating toponyms, and adding essential cartographic elements such as a graticule of latitude and longitude. He also expanded the map’s scope to include frontier territories in the northwest and upstate New York. In doing so, he crafted a dramatic image of the theatre of the French-Indian War: a visualization that resonated deeply with British audiences and made the map a huge commercial success.

 

Background

In the 1750s, New England was the most densely inhabited and most significantly developed region in North America. The area consisted of a number of British colonies that all were under rapid development. The scope of the Crown’s possible dominion was constantly being expanded and cartography was a crucial craft for visualizing such ambitions. It was also a time of sporadic conflict with the French, who despite having a much smaller demographic focused on Canada, saw their mercantile interests extend deeper and deeper into what the British perceived as their territories.

New England had been the subject of more than a century of cartographic endeavors, beginning in earnest with John Smith’s original surveys in the early 17^th century. Much of the early mapping of New England was in manuscript form, which was later transferred onto charts or included in books. Maps were built on surveys: systematic approaches to specific swathes of land, usually with the underlying ambition of staking a claim. Mead and Jefferys’ map stands as the pre-eminent achievement in this tradition of mapping New England. This is in part because it was the largest and most detailed rendition of the region to date, but also because it was an unabashed and forceful legitimization of British holdings. Executed with an impeccable aesthetic and incredible detail, and issued at a crucial moment in time, Mead’s map quickly became the principal image of New England, a status that lasted until well after the American Revolution.

Ultimately, Map of the Most Inhabited Part of New England was not just the largest, most comprehensively researched, and most detailed map of contemporary New England: It also bolstered the Crown’s territorial claims while delegitimizing those of the French, and highlighted the threat emanating from Canada. Despite the contingent nature of geographical representation and its obvious links to contemporaneous political ambitions, virtually everyone who used or came in contact with Mead’s map must have recognized its genius. Not only had he embedded generations of hardship and struggle in a single chart, it captured the highest aspirations and deepest fears of the mightiest nation on earth.

**This map is co-owned with Geographicus Antique Maps in Brooklyn.**

 

Post-script

Most colonial maps of New England were printed in London for the London market. They were usually not cheap and would only have been bought and read by the upper echelons of society. The below-cited advertisement for Jefferys’ publication of Mead’s map sets the cost of the map at half a Guinea; the most widely circulated gold denomination in Britain and no small amount.

“This Day is published, In Four Sheets. Price 10s. 6d. A MAP of the most inhabited Parts of NEW-ENGLAND; containing the Provinces of Massachusets Bay and New Hampshire, with the Colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island. In which will be included the Course of Hudson’s River from New-York to the Carrying-place, with the Lakes and Country adjoining to Crown-Point, the present Seat of War between Major General Johnson and the French. The Whole composed from actual Surveys, and the Situation adjusted by Astronomical Observations. By J. GREEN, Esq; Sold by Mess. Bowles, King, Tinney; J. Payne in Pater-noster-row; T. Kitchen near St. Andrews Church, Holborn; and T. Jefferys the Corner of St. Martin’s Lane in the Strand.”

– Notice in the London newspaper Public Advertiser on November 29^th 1755