Kentucky Map 1839 State Print - Louisville, Lexington, Frankfort

Henry S. Tanner, working out of Philadelphia, issued this Kentucky 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 W. Brose, this printing carries three insets, the Falls of the Ohio and the environs of both Lexington and Clarksburg, alongside a table of distances between Louisville, Pittsburgh, and New Orleans that frames Kentucky within the wider Ohio-Mississippi trade network. The sheet maps Kentucky statewide, its stage and steamboat routes reflecting a state whose commerce depended as much on river traffic as on the roads linking its interior towns.

The Falls of the Ohio inset singles out the rapids near Louisville that shaped river navigation and made the city a natural transshipment point on the Ohio. Lexington's and Clarksburg's insets add city-level detail the rest of the map doesn't extend elsewhere, reflecting Lexington's standing as one of Kentucky's oldest and most established interior towns. The Louisville-Pittsburgh-New Orleans distance table situates Kentucky within a trade corridor stretching the length of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Together the falls, the city insets, and the distance table sketch a state whose 1839 economy was built on its position along that river corridor.

For a Kentucky family with Louisville or Lexington roots, or a collector building out Kentucky's 19th-century maps, this sheet has a specific pull. The store also carries Kentucky combined with Tennessee in both Cram's 1893 and 1883 editions, and on its own in Bradford's 1838 atlas; this 1839 Tanner sheet is the only one of the group to pair the Falls of the Ohio with dedicated Lexington and Clarksburg insets. It's printed unframed and available in a range of sizes to fit whatever wall it's headed for.