Maryland & Delaware Map 1845 Regional Print - Annapolis, Dover, Baltimore

Sidney Morse and Samuel Breese, working in New York, published this combined map of Maryland and Delaware in 1845 as part of Morse's North American Atlas, issued by Harper & Brothers across nine illustrated parts sold for twenty-five cents apiece. Morse and Breese pioneered the cerographic wax-engraving process used here, and this sheet carries a dedicated inset of the District of Columbia alongside a profile of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad printed across its top, a level of added transportation detail not every sheet in the atlas received. Both states are shown as long-settled parts of the Chesapeake region, their economies increasingly organized around the new railroads even as the older Chesapeake and Ohio Canal still carried a substantial share of their trade.

Annapolis anchors the Maryland side as that state's capital, a small colonial-era town on the Chesapeake whose political role had long outweighed its modest commercial standing next to Baltimore. Dover serves the same role for Delaware, seated well inland from that state's own stretch of the bay. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal crosses the sheet's western reaches, and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, profiled in its own inset, traces the newer route already beginning to compete with the canal for the region's freight. Together the two capitals, the canal, and the railroad profile sketch a region in the middle of a genuine shift from water to rail transport.

A Maryland or Delaware family with roots along the old canal or rail corridors will find this sheet speaks to that transition directly, and it suits a collector drawn to the added detail of its Washington inset and railroad profile. The store also carries Maryland and Delaware from Cram's later 1893 edition and combined with Virginia and West Virginia in Cram's 1883 and Asher & Adams' 1883 sheets, all drawn after rail had fully eclipsed the canal shown so prominently here; this 1845 Morse sheet is the earliest Maryland map in the collection. It's printed unframed and available in a range of sizes to fit whatever wall it's headed for.