New Jersey Map 1845 State Print - Trenton, Newark, Camden

Sidney Morse and Samuel Breese, working in New York, published this map of New Jersey 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 to print the map, a technique cheaper than copper-plate engraving that let Harper's sell four full-color maps per part at a fraction of the price of comparable engraved sheets, and this sheet extends beyond New Jersey's own borders to show slices of neighboring Pennsylvania, New York, and Delaware. New Jersey is shown here squeezed between two of the country's largest cities, its earliest railroads already beginning to knit its towns into the commercial orbit of both.

Trenton anchors the map as the state capital, positioned on the Delaware River at a crossing point that had made it strategically important since the Revolutionary War. The Delaware River forms the state's entire western border, separating New Jersey from Pennsylvania, while the state's Atlantic coastline traces its eastern edge. Roads and the newest railroads radiate from the major towns, already denser here than in most of the other states in this atlas given New Jersey's position between Philadelphia and New York City. Together the capital, the river border, and the emerging rail network sketch a small state whose development was shaped almost entirely by its two much larger neighbors.

A New Jersey family with roots in the old river towns along the Delaware will find this sheet speaks to that history, and it suits a collector marking the state before the railroads had fully turned it into a commuter corridor between Philadelphia and New York. The store also carries New Jersey grouped with Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware in Cram's 1878 sheet, a four-state regional view quite different in scope from this dedicated state portrait; this 1845 Morse sheet is the earliest New Jersey map in the collection. It's printed unframed and available in a range of sizes to fit whatever wall it's headed for.