1796 Connecticut From the Best Authorities
DESCRIPTION
One of the earliest detailed maps of Connecticut published in the United States, this handsome 1796 map appeared during the first great period of American commercial atlas making.
Engraved by Benjamin Tanner and published in New York by John Reid, it was prepared for the American edition of William Winterbotham's History of America and also appeared in Reid's American Atlas, recognized as the second commercial atlas of the United States published in America.
Connecticut in the Early Republic
The map presents Connecticut less than a decade after it ratified the Constitution in 1788, dividing the state into its early counties and an intricate network of towns. Roads connect communities across the state, while symbols identify courthouses, churches and meeting houses, ironworks, mills, and other features of the developing landscape. Mountain ranges, rivers, lakes, and the deeply indented shoreline of Long Island Sound are carefully engraved, with portions of New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Long Island providing geographic context.
Particularly interesting is Connecticut's western boundary with New York, including the narrow territory known as “The Oblong,” the legacy of a long running colonial boundary dispute. The map follows the boundary north from Long Island Sound along the Byram River and identifies the historic “3 Trees” boundary marker near the southwestern corner of the state. These details were inherited from some of the most advanced Connecticut cartography of the period and make the map an important record of how the state's boundaries were understood at the end of the eighteenth century.
An Early American Atlas Map
Tanner's map was closely related to the Connecticut map published by Mathew Carey the previous year, itself engraved by the celebrated Connecticut engraver Amos Doolittle. Reid's American Atlas followed Carey's pioneering American atlas publications and contained twenty engraved maps of the new nation and its states. With its fine engraving, attractive period color, detailed settlement pattern, and distinctly early American publication history, this map provides an appealing portrait of Connecticut during the first years of the United States.
CONDITION
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