Massachusetts in 1815 - Boston, Worcester, Salem

This map of Massachusetts was published by Mathew Carey of Philadelphia, America's first great commercial publisher, and appeared in Carey's General Atlas, the first atlas produced in the United States to employ standard color on its maps rather than leaving buyers to color their own copies. This particular sheet is finished in full original wash color rather than the more common outline tints of the period, engraved with the decorative swash-letter title typical of Carey's workshop and the still slightly naive engraving style of early American mapmakers. It depicts the state of Massachusetts alone, tracing its boundaries with New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, along with the distinctive curve of Cape Cod. Published in 1815, just after the War of 1812, this map captures Massachusetts as one of the original states of the Union and a mature center of New England's maritime commerce and political life.

Boston, the state capital, had by this date long been established as one of the busiest ports in the young republic, its wharves built on a maritime trade stretching from the Grand Banks fisheries to the China trade. Worcester, inland at the crossroads of central Massachusetts, was still a modest market town decades before its rise as an industrial city. Salem, north of Boston, remained one of the wealthiest ports in America on the strength of its East India trade, even as its great age of shipping had begun to give way to Boston's dominance. Cape Cod's long, curling arm, traced along the eastern boundary of the state, had for generations shaped the fishing and whaling economy of the towns strung along its coast. Together these places sketch a Massachusetts still oriented outward to the Atlantic, its wealth and identity built on the sea.

This map makes a fitting gift for anyone with roots in Boston, Salem, or the towns of Cape Cod, or for a collector interested in the earliest American atlases to use standard color on their maps. Buyers should note we also carry Massachusetts alongside Rhode Island and Connecticut in later, more railroad-focused county maps by Colton and by Mitchell and Campbell; this 1815 Carey edition is by far the earliest of the three, a snapshot of the state in the years immediately following the War of 1812. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact study print to a larger statement piece.