1850 Cowperthwait / Mitchell Map of New Jersey
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Description: This hand colored map is a copper plate engraving, dating to 1850 by the legendary American Mapmaker S.A. Mitchell, the elder. It represents New Jersey. This historically important map is extremely rare as it existed only in the 1850 edition of the Mitchell’s Universal Atlas. This map also contains lists about the New Jersey population as well as a chart of travel to destinations from New Jersey by steamboat, stagecoach and canal. This map is dated and copyrighted, 1850
Date: 1850
References: None found.
Cartographer: Samuel Augustus Mitchell Senior began his map publishing career in the early 1830s. Having worked as a school teacher, Mitchell was frustrated with the low quality and inaccuracy of school texts of the period. His first maps were an attempt to rectify this problem. In the next 20 years Mitchell would become the most prominent American map publisher of the mid-19th century. Mitchell worked with prominent engravers H. S. Tanner and H. N. Burroughs before attaining the full copyright on his maps in 1847. In 1849 Mitchell teamed up with printer Cowperthwait & Company to produce the Mitchell's Universal Atlas and the Mitchell's General Atlas. In the late 1850s most of the Mitchell copyrights were bought by Desilver and Co. who continued to publish his maps, many with modified borders and color schemes, until Mitchell's son, Samuel Augustus Mitchell Jr, entered the picture. S.A. Mitchell Jr. purchased most of the copyrights back from Desilver and, from 1860 on, published his own New General Atlas. The younger Mitchell became as prominent as his father and published atlases well into the late 1880s when most of the copyrights were again sold and the Mitchell firm closed its doors for the final time. Click here for a list of rare maps from Samuel Augustus Mitchell.
Size: Printed area measures 15 x 13 inches (38.1 x 33.02 centimeters)
Condition: Fine or perfect condition. Blank on verso.
Code: NJ-m-50 (Necessary for phone inquiries: 646-320-8650)
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