Massachusetts, Rhode Island & Connecticut Map 1865 Regional Print - Boston, Providence, Hartford

This map of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut was produced by S. Augustus Mitchell Jr. and published in 1865 by E.H. Butler & Co. for Mitchell's New Reference Atlas for the Use of Colleges, Libraries, Families and Counting Houses. At a comparatively large scale of 1:1,400,000, this sheet renders the three compact New England states in unusually fine detail, down to Long Island Sound and the coastal towns along it, and it is hand-colored and engraved with relief shown by hachures throughout, the kind of fine-grained detail Mitchell's larger-format sheets rarely matched. It covers southern New England in 1865, the year the Civil War ended and the region's textile mills and rail lines stood ready for the industrial expansion that followed.

Massachusetts is shown centered on Boston, already New England's largest city and its commercial and cultural hub. Rhode Island, the smallest state on the sheet, is anchored by Providence, its harbor tied into the same coastal trade routes as Boston's. Connecticut occupies the sheet's southern portion around Hartford, with Long Island Sound tracing its full southern edge and its own shoreline towns marked in detail. Railways, rivers, and county boundaries are packed densely across all three states, reflecting how thoroughly settled and industrialized southern New England already was by the mid-1860s, decades ahead of much of the rest of the country.

If your family history runs through Boston, Providence, or Hartford, this sheet puts the whole of home on one page at genuinely fine reference-map detail. It also suits a collector building a set of Mitchell's compact New England sheets, and makes a fitting gift for anyone with roots in the region's early textile and shipping trades, industries this map's dense rail lines and harbor towns help illustrate. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact study print to a larger statement piece for a hallway or study.