New Jersey in 1831 - Trenton, Newark, Princeton

This map of New Jersey was published in 1831 by the Philadelphia cartographer Anthony Finley as part of his New General Atlas, engraved by Young & Delleker and issued in a color-by-county format that Finley used across his state maps of the period. Finley's atlas, first issued in 1824 and updated annually through 1834, was among the more widely used American atlases of its day, valued for combining clean engraving with the practical county coloring collectors of Finley's work still look for today. This sheet depicts New Jersey as one of the young republic's original states, already well settled along its eastern seaboard and river valleys, at a time when the state's economy was shifting from colonial-era farming toward the early industry and trade that its position between Philadelphia and New York was beginning to attract.

The map shows New Jersey bordered by Pennsylvania to the west, with Delaware Bay marking the state's southern coast and the Atlantic Ocean running the length of its eastern shore, while Long Island appears offshore to help orient the reader toward New York. Trenton, the state capital, sat on the Delaware River astride the falls that had long made it a natural crossing point and mill town. Newark, already the state's largest town, had begun to grow as a manufacturing center linked to the port of New York, while Princeton, seat of the College of New Jersey since 1746, gave the state one of the young nation's most established centers of learning. Together these places capture a compact state whose importance rested as much on its position between two great cities as on its own farmland and rivers.

This map makes a fitting gift for anyone with family roots in Trenton, Newark, or the college town of Princeton, or for a collector drawn to the color-by-county style of Anthony Finley's early nineteenth-century atlases. Finley issued this map at the height of his run of annual atlas editions between 1824 and 1834, and collectors of his work often seek out the 1831 printing specifically for its pairing with the accompanying Atlas Classica bound into the same volume. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact study print to a larger statement piece.