John Pinkerton
53.3 x 71.1 cm
This is the more unusual full colour example of Pinkerton's Southern United States map focusing on Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and the Carolinas.
There were various iterations of maps of the southeastern United States in this format with Thomas Jefferys providing some earliest in the 1760s. These were first issued by Sayer and Bennett, followed by their successors Laurie and Whittle, who produced a map in 1794 which focused slightly further south, showing the Florida Peninsula but not showing Kentucky and Tennessee. John Cary produced a map of the same region in 1806 but his map zoomed out slightly and included by the Florida Peninsula and Kentucky and Tennessee. The borders on all of these were changed and updated as necessary.
Pinkerton opts to move north, omitting the Peninsula, showing only the very furthest north of Florida and including the southern part of the Northwest Territory. He also follows Cary in showing Georgia on the old Emanuel Bowen model, with its western border reaching the Mississippi River, with its interior showing multiple Native American settlements and groups. There is no indication of the infamous Yazoo Land Scandal which was raging in Georgia during this period. Pertinent to that, the southern reaches of the Nortwest Territory (Western Territory on the map) show some of the notorious land companies which often served as investment vehicles for the unregulated purchase of Native American lands including the Illinois Company, the Wabash Company and the Jersey Company.
This is one of the most attractive and detailed regional maps from the early inception of the United States.
Original colour. [USA9959]

