Georgia Map 1839 State Print - Savannah, Augusta, Macon

Henry S. Tanner, working out of Philadelphia, issued this Georgia sheet in 1839, included in the 1842 edition of his New Universal Atlas, the last he personally published after three decades spent building a reputation as one of America's most trusted cartographers. Engraved by J. Knight, this printing carries an ornate title cartouche and a table of distances layered over the state's canal and road network, a practical addition for travelers crossing a state still expanding its infrastructure, its counties hand-colored in pastel shades typical of Tanner's house style. The sheet maps Georgia statewide, tracking a period of steady growth as the state's transportation network of canals and roads was actively being built out to connect its interior cotton counties to coastal shipping points.

Georgia's counties are each shaded distinctly, a settlement pattern that by 1839 had spread well beyond the coast into the state's cotton-growing interior. The distance table converts the map's canal and road network into practical travel information, listing how far apart the state's scattered towns and county seats actually sat. Rivers and mountain ranges are worked into the base map beneath the roads and canals, providing the geographic backbone that shaped where those transportation routes could actually run. Together the counties, the distance table, and the underlying terrain sketch a state whose infrastructure was still catching up to its expanding cotton economy.

For a Georgia family with cotton-belt or coastal-shipping roots, someone who's settled in the state more recently, or a collector building out the state's mid-19th-century maps, this sheet has a specific pull. The store also carries Georgia from Cram's 1893 edition, from a combined Alabama-Georgia-South Carolina-Florida sheet in Cram's 1883 edition, and from Bradford's 1838 atlas; this 1839 Tanner sheet is the only one of the group to map Georgia on its own with a dedicated distance table layered over its canal and road network. It's printed unframed and available in a range of sizes, from a compact 16x20 up to a large-format A0, to fit whatever wall it's headed for.