Announcement of the addition of The American Revolution and Its Era: Maps and Charts of North America and the West Indies, 1750-1789 to the American Memory online collections

[Danna Bell-Russel]

Good morning,

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 at loc.gov