Antique Map of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and New England (1747) | Vintage American Colonies | Old Map Decor | History Art Print

A scarce and remarkable 1749 map of the New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Maine, New Hampshire and Connecticut by Emmanuel Bowen. Covering from the Chesapeake Bay to Lake Champlain and from Lake Ontario to Nova Scotia, this remarkable map is an excellent example of both the success and failures of 18th century English mapping in the American colonies. It also makes evident the challenges of the European map publisher in piecing together numerous disparate reports and mappings into a single cohesive cartographic entity. In this example, the contrast is most strikingly elucidated in Bowen's relatively accurate mapping of the coast lines in contrast to the extraordinary vagueness of the interior. A simple overlay with a modern map reveals that while Bowen's longitudinal cartography along the coastline is slightly off from Cape Cod westward, his latitudinal reference points are dead on. Heading inland from the Atlantic, this precision quickly evaporates. Lake Ontario is proportionally