A place to discuss North Carolina's cartographic history
The Pocket Atlas Maps of North Carolina published by Mathew Carey, 1796-1820. Mathew Carey published his first “Carey’s American Pocket Atlas” in 1796. The engraved plate for this map of North Carolina was used in later issues of Carey’s pocket… Read moreCarey Pocket Atlas Maps of North Carolina
Joseph Purcell’s “A Map of the States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia…” was first engraved and printed in 1788, and published in the August 1788 issue of American Magazine, and the 1789 edition of Jedidiah Morse’s American… Read moreGeneva edition of Purcell’s map of SE USA.
Freydeck suddenly appeared west of the Blue Ridge (in current day Ashe County) on several English and French maps of North America published in 1755. By the end of the 18th Century, Freydeck was gone. What is the origin of this extinct North Carolina place name?
A very rare untitled map of Virginia and the Carolinas was published by Joshua Kocherthal in Germany in 1709. Read more about it here.
Minchiate? I had never before heard the term. A previous post described several miniature maps of Carolina, each measuring four inches or less. We have one more to add to the list. Minchiate is an early 16th-century card game, originating in Florence, Italy, and played with a deck of 97 cards.
The old axiom, “good things come in small packages”, certainly holds true in maps. There are some miniature maps of Carolina that are adorable. Let’s take a look at a few maps of the Carolinas that measure no more than four inches.
Carolana, the original name for what is now North Carolina, wandered on maps from present day NC, to Mississippi, and finally to upstate NY.
John Lawson published a map of Carolina in A New Voyage to Carolina in 1709; most people familiar with Lawson know of this map. However, virtually unknown is Lawson’s map of Ocracoke Inlet, titled “Ocacock Inlet No. Carolina”, with an engraved date of August 22d, 1709. Read more about it via the linked pdf.
If asked to name 18th Century North Carolina surveyors, the top three names that come to mind, in chronological order, are John Lawson, Edward Moseley, and William Churton. There are a lot of mysteries pertaining to Churton’s life, death, and his manuscript map of North Carolina. Some of those mysteries are discussed here.
Henry Mouzon contributed very little, if anything, to the famous 18th century map of the Carolinas that bears his name. This is the story behind the map.