Carte de la Virginie et du Maryland

First edition, first state of Vaugondy’s reduction of Fry and Jefferson’s monumental map of Virginia, Maryland and Delaware.

The original source for this map was a wall map of the same region produced by Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson (father to Thomas). They had already been commissioned to survey several large tracts of land in this region, particularly the property of Lord Fairfax as well as surveys of the borders between Virginia and North Carolina and Virginia and Maryland in 1740 and 1750. This developed into a commission by the Lords of Trade for a survey of the whole of Virginia including the virgin lands of the western region and the Appalachian mountains. The first printed map was issued in c.1751 and immediately superseded all previous maps of the region. The Fry-Jefferson map was issued over the next thirty years in multiple formats, including segmented and linen backed, as a separate issue and as part of Thomas Jeffery’s important “American Atlas”. However, the most important geographical updates were made in the first four editions to 1755. It became the template for all maps of the region for the next half a century.

Robert de Vaugondy, one of the foremost commercial French map makers of the time, reduced the original to add it to his “Atlas Universel.” On the whole, Vaugondy follows the Fry Jefferson map faithfully, crediting them on the cartouche, but with one major alteration. This map adds a western border to Virginia, paralleling the Allegheny Mountains. Beyond these, Vaugondy adds “Louisiane” to the map, emphasizing French claims to the interior of North America. On the source map, Virginia is shown as stretching west well beyond the Allegheny range in keeping with English claims that the western borders of the colonies were the Pacific Ocean.

One of the most interesting details on both maps is the inclusion of the family names associated with the great plantations of Virginia. Of particular note is the placement of the name “Washington” a short distance south of the town of Belhaven, a disused name for Alexandria. This plantation is placed next to Little Hunting Creek, the name by which it was known before its name change to Mount Vernon. A young George Washington spent his youth there as the ward of his half-brother Lawrence, after the death of his father at age eleven. He would then go on to inherit Mount Vernon in 1752.

One final point of interest are the engravers of this map. Guillaume-Nicolas Delahaye was the engraver of the map but more unusually, the cartouche is credited to Elizabeth Haussard, whose signature can faintly be seen on the lower left below the cartouche.

Original colour. [USA9487]