Map of the southeastern part of North America, 1721 [cartographic material].

ArchivalResource

Hammerton, William, d. 1732. Map of the southeastern part of North America, 1721 [cartographic material].

Map of the southeastern part of North America, 1721 [cartographic material].

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/775800063

Manuscript map of the southeastern part of North America, drawn in 1721 by William Hammerton, after a manuscript map by John Barnwell. The map is drawn on one sheet made up of seven panels of paper pasted together. The cartouche, largely blank, contains the name "Hammerton", presumably William Hammerton, a Charleston (South Carolina) mariner who died in 1732. It is, according to the map historian William P. Cumming, a copy of a map made by Colonel John "Tuscarora Jack" Barnwell, the notable frontier settler and Indian fighter. The present manuscript map be the earliest detailed surviving English map of the southern frontier of North America. The map shows an area from Cape Charles in Virginia to Cape Canaveral in Florida and westward to the Mississippi. Finely drawn in black and brown ink, the map displays all the marks and stains of a working document. It gives the location of French, Spanish, English, and Indian settlements, information concerning Indian tribes and trader's paths, and specifies the routes taken and the location of battles against the Spanish and Indians during the first two decades of the 18th century. Numerous explanatory legends give details about the quality of the land, the location of trading posts, the size of Indian tribes, and details of marauding forays. Another copy of the Barnwell map in the London Public Record Office is undated and was probably executed a year or so later. There are minor differences between the two, as noted in Cumming. He summarizes: "Generally speaking the Public Record Office map seems to embody many more details which would weigh in favor of expansionist policies being forwarded by the South Carolinians, especially as against the French in the Southeast." The copy of the map in the London Public Record Office was used in making a number of other important early 18th century maps of the Southeast, including Catesby's "A map of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands" (1731); Henry Popple's "A map of the British Empire in America" (1733); and John Mitchell's "A map of the British and French dominions in North America" (1755). The Mitchell map was of particular importance, as editions of it were were used for the basis of negotiations between the English and American plenipotentiaries in 1782 and 1783, and in subsequent boundary disputes.

1 map : pen and black and brown ink, with red, yellow, and blue-gray wash ; 78 x 132 cm.

Yale Center for British Art