Georgia Map 1845 State Print - Milledgeville, Savannah, Augusta

Sidney Morse and Samuel Breese, working in New York, published this map of Georgia 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 price the atlas within reach of ordinary households, and this sheet carries an explanation panel decoding its symbols for towns, roads, railroads, rivers, and canals. Georgia is shown here with its counties fully organized across the state, its earliest rail lines only beginning to supplement the roads and rivers that had long carried its cotton trade toward the Atlantic coast.

Milledgeville anchors the map as the state capital, a position the town had held since 1804 and would keep for another generation before the seat of government eventually moved to Atlanta after the Civil War. Savannah appears on the Atlantic coast as the state's historic port, its wealth built over more than a century on the cotton and rice trade moving through its harbor. The Chattahoochee and Savannah rivers mark the state's western and eastern edges, both marked as principal routes for interior trade reaching the coast. Together the capital, the port, and the two rivers sketch a state whose cotton economy still depended overwhelmingly on water transport at this date.

A Georgia family with roots in the old Milledgeville-era counties will recognize this sheet's world directly, and it suits a collector drawn to the fact that it predates Atlanta's rise by decades. The store also carries Georgia from Cram's later 1893 edition and combined with Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida in Asher & Adams' 1883 and Rogers & Johnston's 1857 sheets, all drawn after Atlanta had become the state's dominant rail hub and eventual capital; this 1845 Morse sheet is the earliest Georgia map in the collection. It's printed unframed and available in a range of sizes to fit whatever wall it's headed for.