Maine Map 1845 State Print - Augusta, Portland, Bangor

Sidney Morse and Samuel Breese, working in New York, published this map of Maine 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, and canals. Maine is shown here less than a decade after the Aroostook War of 1838-1839, a bloodless boundary dispute with British Canada that had only recently settled the state's northern border under the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842.

Augusta anchors the map as the state capital, a role the town had held only since 1832 after the seat of government moved there from Portland. Portland itself appears on the coast as the state's largest city and principal port, its shipping trade still the backbone of Maine's economy at this date. The state's northern border, only recently fixed by treaty, traces a long, still-thinly-settled frontier with British territory. Together the young capital, the coastal port, and the newly settled boundary sketch a state whose northern reaches were only just being secured as American territory when this map was drawn.

A Maine family with roots along the coast or in the border counties settled by that treaty will find this sheet catches a genuinely pivotal moment, and it suits a collector drawn to a boundary dispute now largely forgotten outside the state. The store also carries Maine as part of the four-state 1878 Cram sheet pairing it with New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts, a broader regional grouping quite different from this dedicated state portrait; this 1845 Morse sheet is the earliest Maine map in the collection. It's printed unframed and available in a range of sizes to fit whatever wall it's headed for.