1795 New Hampshire
DESCRIPTION
This is one of the earliest American-produced maps of New Hampshire as a U.S. state, issued in 1795 within the first American United States Gazetteer.
While New Hampshire had been mapped repeatedly during the colonial period by British and European cartographers, this engraving belongs to the first generation of geographic works created after independence. The map identifies principal towns and settlements, shows major roads linking population centers, and includes an early, generalized indication of the White Mountains, labeled here as the “White Hills,” demonstrating the still-developing understanding of interior topography at the close of the eighteenth century.
The engraving is executed in a restrained but elegant late-eighteenth-century style. Fine engraved script is enhanced with decorative flourishes in the title, while the composition is framed within a Federalist-era border typical of early American book maps. Rivers, lakes, and political divisions are rendered with clarity, emphasizing civic geography and transportation over ornamental excess. Though modest in scale and intended for inclusion within a reference volume rather than as a wall map, the plate conveys a surprisingly dense amount of geographic information for the period.
Joseph T. Scott, was a Philadelphia engraver whose United States Gazetteer holds an important place in early American publishing history. Issued during the formative years of U.S. cartography, Scott’s gazetteer was the first comprehensive geographic reference compiled and printed in the United States. Its state maps, including this example of New Hampshire, reflect the ambitions of a new nation to define, document, and standardize its geography using American sources rather than relying on European mapmakers.
CONDITION
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