Ontario Map 1842 County Print - Toronto, Kingston, Hamilton

Henry S. Tanner published this map of Upper Canada, the historic name for what is now Ontario, in the 1842 edition of A New Universal Atlas, the final printing Tanner himself issued from his Philadelphia offices before the atlas passed out of his hands. This edition added new maps not listed in the original table of contents, including Wisconsin and Iowa, and was the first Tanner printing to carry John Disturnell's name alongside his own on the publishing credits, a partnership sharing the same Broadway address in New York that J.H. Colton had used until 1840. It was also the first Tanner edition to include the Bradford map of Texas, evidence of how fast American territorial coverage was expanding even as the Upper Canada sheet itself changed comparatively little from Tanner's earlier printings. The map records Upper Canada six years after the 1836 edition and five years after the rebellions of 1837, its county boundaries and settled shoreline little altered on the surface despite the political turmoil the colony had weathered in between.

Toronto, by 1842 well established under its post-1834 name, anchors the sheet's southern shore on Lake Ontario as Upper Canada's capital. Kingston, further east where Lake Ontario narrows into the St. Lawrence, remains marked as a fortified town of long-standing strategic importance. Hamilton, at the western end of Lake Ontario, appears with a growing prominence this later edition captures more clearly than the 1836 printing, its harbour already showing early signs of the industrial growth that would define the town later in the century. Together these three places trace a colony whose core geography had settled into a stable pattern even as the towns within it continued to grow at markedly different rates.

This later county sheet suits an Ontario family whose roots trace to the years just after the 1837 rebellions, or a collector interested in Tanner's final atlas edition and its new Disturnell publishing partnership specifically. The store also carries this same title and publisher in the earlier 1836 edition, issued before the rebellions and before Hamilton's growth was clearly visible on the page; this 1842 sheet is the later and more administratively current of the two Tanner Upper Canada editions, the last the ageing Philadelphia publisher produced before handing the imprint on. It's offered unframed and available across a full range of sizes, from a compact print to a large-format wall piece.