New York State Maps 1793-1900 Manuscripts and Special Collections New York State Library
New York State Library
Jo Margaret Mano
This project was supported by a New York State Library Research Residency Award.
Table of Contents
New York Cartography in the Nineteenth Century
The mapping of New York State from 1784 to 1900 reflects the nationwide development of a uniquely American school of cartography, the changing focus and technology of mapping, and the initial influence of Simeon DeWitt, the State's first surveyor-general.
The cartographic style that developed in the new United States was based primarily on a European military tradition, adapted to rapid production, with feature depiction limited by a scarcity of accurate locations and data. In the nineteenth century American cartography was produced primarily by the private sector, leading to an initial wide variety of subjects, symbols and scales. Atlases, pocket map guides, legislative maps, urban perspectives and plans, county maps represent somewhat separate traditions. Map production responded to pressing needs, particularly transportation information: canal maps in the 1820's and 1830's, railroad maps and travellers' guides from the 1830's to the turn of the century, large scale county maps in the mid 1800s, cyclists' and thematic (economic and geological) maps by the 1890's. Scales were anything but standard. Some conventions became established through copying, always a factor in cartographic history. Simeon DeWitt's 1802 New York map was sent to all the State governors, providing a style prototype. A far greater influence in standardization was the original concentration of cartographic production in a small area of Philadelphia, capital of the new nation from 1790 to 1800. Beginning in the 1830's, the influence of mass distribution by major commercial publishers also had an impact, although individuals and small companies continued to make contributions in style and technology.
Philadelphia was the center of nineteenth century cartographic production in the United States. Unlike the London publishing houses with all the activities centered in one firm, the Philadelphia-dominated American trade often jobbed out engraving, printing and coloring to local independent artisans. The trade was located within a few blocks and engravers typically worked on a freelance basis, some with long productive associations with a particular cartographer and/or publisher, others for only a brief period. The information about many mapmakers, particularly in the first half of the century, is fragmentary or non-existent. Thus, documenting their work and the relationships between cartographers, engravers and publishers must often rely on the maps themselves. In contrast, data on major figures in either engraving or publishing are more substantial, if only because of the testimony of credits and imprints. While Philadelphia was the major center for map engravers and publishers, Boston was also an early node. New York City rapidly increased in importance after 1850 and Chicago's rise to prominence began towards the end of the nineteenth century. Within New York State, Albany, Utica, Syracuse and Buffalo were also centers for map production.
Copper engraving, invented in Europe in the mid-fifteenth century, was the preferred method for cartographic printing for four centuries. Maps were reversed on a soft copper plate and the original engraved to produce a backwards-reading intaglio template. When ink was applied, it remained in the grooves of the plate, and then was absorbed when dampened paper was pressed over the copper plate to produce a map. The process enabled clear maps with fine detail, and copper plates could be easily re-engraved to make corrections. However, the soft copper did not withstand the wear of the printing press, and limited the number of copies produced to a maximum of about a thousand impressions.
Engraving was highly skilled, tedious and expensive, and the original cartography often suffered in the translation from mapmaker to engraver through errors and omissions. Steel plate engraving was developed in the United States during the first decade of the nineteenth century for engraving bank notes, after copper proved impracticable, and a process for softening the hard steel by decarbonization was invented. The steel engraving technique for maps was used mainly by publishers S. Augustus Mitchell and J. H. Colton. Lithography was a much cheaper reproduction process, involving the chemical separation of water and greasy ink on a flat surface, rather than physical separation with the map being incised (engraved) or raised (woodcut). The original map was transferred to a lithographic stone using a greasy crayon or ink, washed, printing ink applied and the image transferred to paper. Invented in France in 1804, lithography was not widely used until the mid-nineteenth century in the United States. Although cheaper, and more accurate in reproducing the cartographer's original, the quality was inferior to copper engraving. Confusion between these two methods is made more complex because the term "engraved" was sometimes applied to lithographic copies of engravings, so only the press marks on engravings can be used as proof of that reproduction technique. Wax engraving (cerography) and electrotyping, invented by Sidney Morse and first used in 1839, produced a cheaper but poorer quality reproduction than copper engraving or lithography. After 1870, color reproduction using chromolithography was introduced, particularly for perspective city plans. The Chicago-based Rand McNally company began publishing railroad maps and guides using cerography in 1871, swiftly expanding into atlas production including pocket versions, to challenge the dominance of Philadelphia's publishers by the turn of the century.
At the close of the Revolutionary period, the cartographic record consisted mainly of small scale North American maps, particularly of the north-eastern seaboard, and large scale campaign sketch maps produced by both the British and American forces. In the colonial period, and during the Revolution, the vast majority of North American maps were published in Europe, mainly by the British and French. Significant contributions were made in colonial mapping by Henry Popple (1733 1 ), Lewis Evans (1749 2 and 1755 3 ), Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson (1751 4 ) and particularly John Mitchell (1755 5 )whose map was consulted in negotiating peace in 1782 and 1783. Samuel Holland and William Gerhard De Brahm, appointed respectively in 1764 as Surveyor-General in the northern and southern North American districts, provided additional material in updating British maps through surveys of land areas. Features in coastal regions were detailed in the London published The English Pilot and Atlantic Neptune. A major London publisher was Thomas Jefferys, appointed Geographer to the King by George III in 1760. Jefferys' publishing firm produced many of the maps and atlases used by both sides in the Revolution, including Claude Sauthier's 1776 6 revision of Holland's 1768 7 map of New York and New Jersey. After his death in 1771, Jefferys' associates, Robert Sayer and Willam Faden, continued British publication of atlases and maps using the most recent information gleaned from campaigns during the war.
During the Revolutionary struggle, the Americans were seriously hampered by their need to rely on European maps. George Washington complained "the want of accurate maps of the Country which has hitherto been the Scene of the War, has been a great disadvantage to me. I have in vain endeavored to procure them and have been obliged to make shift, with such Sketches, as I could trace from my own Observations and that of Gentlemen around me." 8 In 1777, Washington appointed Scottish-born Robert Erskine, with the support of Congress, to the position of geographer and surveyor general to the Continental army. Among the first of Eskine's assistants was Simeon DeWitt, born in Wawarsing, Ulster County, a nephew of James Clinton. DeWitt was part of the team of surveyors and draftsmen that provided reconnaissance sketches to guide the Revolutionary campaign. Erskine died in 1780 and DeWitt succeeded him. After the Revolution, Dewitt petitioned Congress twice to sponsor the production of new American maps, integrating the survey information acquired during the war, but lack of funds prevented their support. In https://courseworkwritingservices.com , frustrated by the inability of the new federal government to provide either a commitment to the mapping project or payment for his military service, DeWitt accepted the post of Surveyor-General to his native state--New York.
One of the primary tasks facing the new republic was the accurate measurement and survey of land, especially since veterans who served the length of the war had been promised land for military service. Simeon DeWitt's two major tasks in the immediate post war period were surveying the boundary between Pennsylvania and New York, and supervising the division of the western part of New York State into townships. The township surveys were used by DeWitt in compiling a map of the north-central part of New York State in 1792, the first sheet of a six sheet map completed in 1802. The information used to produce this map drew on campaign sketches, the boundary survey, published maps and material gathered by Dewitt from individual township officials. The 1802 New York Map demonstrates DeWitt's skill in the perspective portrayal of relief features. In 1803, the New York State Senate resolved that a copy of the map, one of the first American-produced officially-sponsored state maps should be sent to each State governor. A 1804 reduction of the map was DeWitt's last direct cartographic contribution, but he continued to supervise state mapping projects including the 1811 plan for New York City and the surveys for the Erie canal, until his death in 1834.
DeWitt provided official sponsorship and supervision in the production of David H. Burr's map and Atlas of the State of New York, dated 1829, but probably not published until early in 1830 when DeWitt reported on their completion to the legislature. 9 The Atlas contains fifty-two maps, detailing for each county roads, rivers, canals, railroads, settlements, churches, mills, forges and manufactories, swamps, some relief (depicted by hachures) and occasional references to land ownership and historic events. In compiling the cartographic material, circular letters were sent to the supervisors of each town to request corrections of draft maps. A revised and updated edition of the Atlas was published in 1839, with agents providing local field-checking. The 1829 edition was engraved by Rawdon, Clark and Company of New York City and Albany, while the 1839 edition credits Stone and Clark of Ithaca as "Republishers." Burr's Atlas was the second American state atlas, Robert Mills having produced the Atlas of the State of South Carolina in 1825. New York was unusual in providing state support for this mapping project. During the first hundred years after the Revolution, most of the maps in the United States were produced by independent cartographers and small commercial publishers. Some maps were drawn, engraved and published by individuals, often trained in other professions. While some projects enjoyed official encouragement and occasional financial assistance, many others were undertaken at personal risk.
While Simeon DeWitt's 1802 map and David Burr's 1829 Atlas marked milestones in New York cartography during the early decades of the nineteenth century, several independent cartographers also produced maps. Apart from their names, little else is known of these mapmakers. Amos Lay published large maps of parts or all New York State between 1801 and 1826, compiled with some information from his own surveys and probably engraved by him. William McCalpin produced a pocket atlas in 1808. John H. Eddy published large scale maps in 1811 and 1818, engraved by Tanner and Vallance of Philadelphia. D. H. Vance drew an even more detailed map, published in 1823, of the western part of the State. Vance later drew plates for Anthony Finley's New American Atlas Designed Principally to Illustrate the Geography of the United States of North America , published in Philadelphia in 1826.
Small scale maps of New York State appeared in various atlases or pocket versions and in gazetteers. Matthew Carey of Philadelphia was the first American to continue the tradition of Jeffreys' London publishing house in producing maps which could be bound as atlases, or interleaved in books. In 1794 Carey's local engravers redrew seven maps from the English Atlas to Guthrie's System of Geography , showing areas involved in Napoleon's campaigns, which combined with sixteen American maps was published as A General Atlas of the Present War . These maps formed the bulk of Carey's American Atlas, the earliest published in the United States, which appeared in 1795 with a second edition in 1809. His American Pocket Atlas , published in 1796, was reissued in 1801, 1805, 1813 and 1814. Editions of 1816 and 1817 carry the imprint of Carey and Warner. Fielding Lucas also drew and published several atlases of state maps in Philadelphia between 1817 and 1830. Other small scale maps appeared in guides, such as Spafford's Gazetteer, which noted key facts on specific places.
The period from 1820 to 1840 is rightly known as the golden age of U. S. cartography, and marked the zenith of copper engraving as a method of reproducing maps. Commercial map publishers included every scale of production from single issue entrepreneurs to major companies. The mapping of New York State reflected this continuum, in volume and in focus. Local production of state maps and guides continued, but in terms of volume they were overshadowed by the mass production methods employed by the publishing firms of S. Augustus Mitchell of Philadelphia and Joseph H. Colton of New York City. These two companies dominated general map and atlas publishing from the early 1830s until about 1890, pioneering new and cheaper ways of producing maps, including steel engraving. At the height of its productivity, Mitchell's company reportedly employed over 250 people and published more than four thousand items a year.
Mitchell's first publication, A New American Atlas (1831) was a reprinted version of Anthony Findley's 1826 atlas. Engraver J.H. Young's name was retained in this edition, but cartographer D.H. Vance's credit was removed and decorative borders added. Young drew and engraved on steel United States maps, individual states including New York, as well as Travellers Guide versions which were folded into a pocket atlas format and included lists of steamboat and canal routes and selected statistics. Augustus Mitchell, who was a businessman rather than a cartographer, reprinted these maps for decades with only minor additions or corrections. Mitchell's son, J. Augustus Jr. took over the firm in 1860, and continued publishing editions of the New General Atlas until 1887.
Joseph Hutchings Colton, like Mitchell, excelled in business management, and acquiring copyrights of previously published maps. His first product was an 1833 reprint of David Burr's 1830 map of New York State, re-engraved by Samuel Stiles. Stiles also engraved the 1834 version of Burr's New York City map, originally published by John Disturnell as part of the guidebook New-York As It Is in 1833 . Colton reprinted several other Burr maps, including not only New York but also Ohio, which were reissued for more than two decades. From 1850 to 1887, a major specialty of the Colton firm was the production of pocket railroad maps and guides, used by the flood of new immigrants. Colton's sons, G.W and C.B. Colton became active in the business by 1855, when the firm's first atlas-- Colton's Atlas of the World was published. A smaller, less expensive version titled Colton's General Atlas (1857) used the same maps and was reprinted through 1874. The Coltons also published several other atlases in the 1860's. Their last work, A Complete Ward Atlas of New York City , appeared in 1892. The closure of the Colton company may have been caused by an unwillingness to change from steel engraving and lithography to the more popular wax engraving technique.
Travellers' guides to the state or linear maps of the Hudson River corridor were produced not only by Mitchell and Colton, but locally by William Cammeyer (1829), William Williams (1827 to 1843), William Guild (1854), J.T. Lloyd (1864), William Link (1878) and William Wade (1845), whose vignettes appeared in wall maps as well as a strip map with panoramic views of the Hudson shore. Common additions to pocket travellers' guides were steamboat and stage routes, canal profiles and distances between places. Later in the century, railroad routes displaced canal information as primary features.
Annual editions of the New York State Legislative Manual also contained maps documenting canal and railroad progress, identifying places and post offices and showing state political divisions. Some of these maps were produced by the State Engineering Division, mapped by state surveyors and typically drawn by state draftsmen. David Vaughn was a prolific Albany draftsman who also executed many large scale canal maps. Weed and Parsons lithographed and published these maps in Albany from about 1865 to 1880. In the last decades of the century, insert maps to the Legislative Manual were published by the national firms of Colton and Rand McNally.
Besides Colton, John Disturnell was another New York City publisher who began producing maps and guidebooks in the 1830's, and published jointly in the late 1840's with Henry S. Tanner, a prolific engraver and publisher who had moved from Philadelphia after more than three decades of cartographic production. Other firms and individuals located in New York City producing maps of the state, as well as guides to the city during the mid-1800's included Humphrey Phelps, Charles Magnus, J. Calvin Smith, Horace Thayer, H.H. Lloyd, Julius Bien and Ensign, Bridgman and Fanning. These firms were among the few producing city maps. In the early decades of the century only Boston, Philadelphia and New York City were large enough to justify economic return in publishing urban maps. When lithography made reproduction cheaper after the 1830's, firms such as Currier and Ives joined Smith, Disturnell, Tanner and R. P. Smith in the field. Annual versions of David T. Valentine's New York City Manual, issued from 1842-1866 also contained maps. A major resource in urban cartography for over fifty years from 1867 was produced by the Sandborn Map Company, founded by D. A. Sandborn in New York City, which published fire insurance maps detailing structures by construction and use. These nationwide data are invaluable in reconstructing economic shifts within urban places.
Panoramic maps or "bird's eye views" first produced in the 1830's, became highly popular in the 1880's with the rise of civic boosterism in the American West. Between five to six thousand of these views were produced by a handful of artists: Adam Beck, Lucien Burleigh, Oakley H. Bailey, Thaddeus Fowler, Clemons J. Pauli, Albert Ruger, Joseph Stoner and Henry Wellge.
Maps of towns and cities also appeared as insets on large county wall maps. These large scale county maps and the county atlases are an important source of geographic information for New York State in the mid-1800s. 10 The lithographed large scale maps included illustrations of prominent local buildings, cadastral plats of communities and lists of businesses. Beginning in the late 1840's the New York Agricultural Societies began promoting large scale county map projects. Several of these wall-hanging county maps were subsequently published by Robert Pearsall Smith of Philadelphia, who conceived a plan to use these and other commissioned county maps to prepare a revised, geodetically correct map of the State in the Burr Atlas tradition. The plan involved distribution of local county and State maps to schools for educational purposes. When the New York Legislature failed to provide financial support after a series of petitions and bills in 1853, Smith and John Homer French published privately in Syracuse a New York gazetteer and map in 1859, a work which includes a long list of supervisors, surveyors, statisticians and engravers who collaborated in the project.
The material from these maps provided much of the information for the New York county atlases published by the Beers family in New York City and Philadelphia between 1865-1876. The atlas format was more manageable and durable than the wall maps. Before 1870, the New York county atlases were usually sold by the publisher or distributor, unlike the later and midwestern atlases which were financed by subscription. Silas and Daniel G. Beers published in Philadelphia until 1868, when Daniel opened a company in New York City. Frederick W. Beers, a cousin, may have taken the firm over in 1870, for imprints suggest Daniel relocated in Philadelphia then, while F. W. Beers continued publishing in New York. The company underwent further changes in name during the mid 1870s to J. B. Beers (Frederick's father), but continued to publish maps, county atlases and histories through the 1880s.
In the last decades of the nineteenth century, commercial map publishing began a westward shift from the east coast centers of Philadelphia and New York City. A prime factor in this movement was the Chicago-based Rand McNally company. William H. Rand and Andrew McNally began by printing guidebooks and railroad tickets, expanding into publishing in 1871 with railway guides. The company used wax engraving which enabled inexpensive reproduction and rapid updating. Rand McNally swiftly expanded from producing railway maps into atlases, national maps and business atlases incorporating railroad information to dominate national cartography by 1900. Issues of Rand McNally Railway Guide published in the early 1870s were illustrated by maps made by the New York firm of Gaylord Watson which produced maps and atlases between 1871 and 1885. The Matthews-Northrup company of Buffalo also published New York state and tourist railway maps in the 1890s.
By the close of the nineteenth century, the federal government had begun systematic topographical survey and mapping with the establishment of the United States Geological Survey, which issued its first map in 1884. The U.S.G.S. instituted accuracy standards, consistent scales and uniform symbols to correct the wide diversity of prior mapping practice, which had been particularly haphazard in older, eastern states like New York. Yet that cartographic diversity also provides a rich legacy of vernacular cultural insights, as varied as the many individuals and companies that mapped nineteenth century New York.
1 Map of the British Empire in America with the adjacent French and Spanish Settlements thereto.
2 Map of Pensilvania, New Jersey, New York, and the Three Delaware Counties
3 General Map of the British Middle Colonies in America
4 Map of the Inhabited Part of Virginia Containing the Whole Province of Maryland
5 Map of the British and French Dominions in North America
6 A Map of the Province of New York Reduc'd from the large drawing of that Province
7 The Provinces of New York and New Jersey with Part of Pensilvania.
8 George Washington, Writings, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick: Washington, D.C., 1931-44: 7:65.
9 New York, Legislative Documents , 53rd session, vol.2, no.189 (Albany, 1830)
10 Albert Hazen Wright, A Check List of New York State County Maps Published 1779-1945, 1965.
Selected Reference Works
Beck, T. Romeyn. "Eulogium on the Life and Services of Simeon De Witt," Albany, N.Y., 1835.
Cumming, William P. British Maps of Colonial America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.
Guthorn, Peter J. American Maps and Mapmakers of the Revolution. Monmouth Beach, N.J.: Freneau Press,1966.
Harley, J. Brian, Petchenik, Barbara Bentz and Towner, Lawrence W. Mapping the American Revolutionary War . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.
Reps, John. Views and Viewmakers of Urban America: Lithographs of Towns and Cities in the United States and Canada, 1825-1925 . Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1984.
Ristow, Walter W. American Maps and Mapmakers : Commercial Cartography in the Nineteenth Century , Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1985.
Stokes, I.N. Phelps. The Iconography of Manhattan Island 1498-1909 New York, 1915, reprint ed., New York: Arno Press, 1967.
Woodward, David (ed.). Five Centuries of Map Printing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.
Woodward, David. The All American Map, Wax Engraving and Its Influence on Cartography , Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977.
Annotated Bibliography of Selected New York State Maps: 1793-1900
This selected bibliography includes New York State Library holdings of sheet and roll maps of the whole of New York State, and of some regions larger than counties dating from the period 1793 to 1900. It does not include State or County atlases, or county maps which should be consulted where greater detail is required. The information included is not definitive, and should be updated when additional information becomes available. Any errors and omissions are the sole responsibility of the author and should be brought to the attention of the author and library staff.
Maps present special problems in classification, annotation and documentation, and thus the terminology used here needs to be defined carefully to facilitate map use and understanding. Maps have particular problems in terms of "authorship" and "copyright", for a map may be copied with minor changes and become the "property" of a new author, or the publisher may buy the copyright from the author. In the United States during the nineteenth century the distinction between the cartographer, the engraver and the publisher was particularly blurred. In this bibliography the designation Author is reserved to either the author or publisher of a given map. This distinction is less difficult than distinguishing between the compiler and engraver of a given map. The engraver is identified here by the compression engr. (engraved), and where the compiler is named the term del . is used (derived from the Latin term meaning drawn). However, these terms were sometimes synonymous. Map "copyright" may be retained by the author, or purchased by the publisher. Where authorship is debatable the ? is used to indicate questionable data. The situation for these nineteenth century maps is particularly complex, for the copyright for some maps was sometimes purchased from the author by the publisher, and some publishers also controlled printing, or bought a copyright for subsequent reprinting.
The bibliography lists the items or symbols portrayed in these maps under Keywords -- both those identified in a specific key, and unkeyed symbols. When the map has a key, the listing reads key (with items symbolized in parentheses). Items symbolized but not in the key are included outside the parentheses.
The annotated bibliography lists maps by date (page 14 to page 43) and by author/publisher (page 45 to page 75). Date entries correspond to the New York State Library Map card catalog listing. Date indicates the edition date, with subsequent dates indicating later editions. Copyright dates that differ from the map date are identified. Special features, including edition changes are listed under the main entry. Views , Insets and Inset Maps are also listed separately after the notes for an entry. The index following the bibliography lists symbols and special features by the map number corresponding to the date entry classification .