Illinois in 1842 - Chicago, Springfield, Peoria

Jeremiah Greenleaf published this striking full-color map of Illinois in Brattleboro, Vermont in 1842, part of his New Universal Atlas first issued that same year. Greenleaf built his career as an educational publisher, having earlier written an English grammar praised by both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and he carried that same commitment to accessible instruction into his later geographic publishing, producing atlases aimed at improving the general American reading public's understanding of the country's rapidly expanding western states. This map of Illinois arrives just four years after the state capital's move to Springfield and captures a state whose county system was nearing completion after two decades of rapid settlement.

Illinois's county map is shown substantially complete by this date, though a handful of counties in the northeast corner, the area around the fast-growing town of Chicago, had not yet been fully organized. Early roads including the National Road are traced across the state, and Fort Dearborn, the military post around which Chicago itself had grown, appears prominently, alongside the Indian Boundary line of 1829 and the poorly drained Winnebago Swamp in the state's north. Springfield anchors the state as its newly designated capital, Chicago is shown still years before its explosive growth into a major American metropolis, and Peoria marks the established river town along the Illinois River that had served as a trading post since the earliest French colonial period.

This map is a fitting gift for a family with Illinois roots, for a transplant now settled in Chicago or Springfield, or for a collector of Greenleaf's scarce 1842 Universal Atlas. It is offered unframed in a range of sizes.