Amer. Revolution era maps & charts... -- new collection

From: Elizabeth L. Brown (ebro@loc.gov)
Date: Mon Aug 07 2000 - 13:43:35 EDT

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    Sender: American Memory Fellows <AMFELLOWS@SUN8.LOC.GOV>
    Poster: "Elizabeth L. Brown" <ebro@LOC.GOV>
    Subject: Amer. Revolution era maps & charts... -- new collection
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    The announcement of this new American Memory collection is being sent to
    a number of lists. Please accept our apologies for any duplicate
    postings.

    The most recent addition to the American Memory online collections ”The
    American Revolution and Its Era: Maps and Charts of North America and
    the West Indies, 1750-1789” presents an important historical record of
    the mapping of North America and the Caribbean online. Advancements in
    mapmaking tools and the onset of the French and Indian War and, later,
    the American Revolution, created a flurry of activity in European and
    North American mapmaking and publishing. This online collection will
    include well over two thousand different maps and manuscripts, with
    easily as many or more unnumbered copies, many with distinct colorations
    and annotations. This collection can be found at the following url:
    http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/armhtml/armhome.html

    Almost six hundred of these items are original manuscript drawings, a
    large number of which are the work of such famous mapmakers as John
    Montresor, Samuel Holland, Claude Joseph Sauthier, John Hills and
    William Gerard De Brahm. They also include many maps from the personal
    collections of William Faden, Admiral Richard Howe and the comte de
    Rochambeau, as well as large groups of maps by three of the best
    eighteenth-century map publishers in London: Thomas Jefferys, William
    Faden and Joseph Frederick Wallet Des Barres. Historical cartographers
    can compare multiple editions, states, and impressions of several of the
    most important maps of the period, follow the development of a
    particular map from the manuscript sketch to the finished printed
    version and its foreign derivatives, and examine the cartographic styles
    and techniques of surveyors and mapmakers from six different countries:
    Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Holland, Italy, and the United
    States.

    Most of the items presented here are documented in “Maps and Charts of
    North America and the West Indies, 1750-1789: A Guide to the Collections
    in the Library of Congress” compiled by John R. Sellers and Patricia
    Molen van Ee in 1981. The online essay ”Mapping the American Revolution
    and Its Era” is taken from this bibliography.

    Please direct any questions about this collection to ndlpcoll@loc.gov



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