Maryland in 1838 - Annapolis, Baltimore, Frederick

Thomas Gamaliel Bradford published this map of Maryland from Boston in 1838, part of his Illustrated Atlas, Geographical, Statistical, and Historical of the United States and Adjacent Countries, a work aimed at the same educational and general-reference market his earlier Comprehensive Atlas had served in 1835. Engraved by G.W. Boynton, the sheet delineates Maryland's counties in distinct hand color and adds a separate inset covering the state's western panhandle, an area too narrow to render at the same scale as the rest of the map without the inset's help. Bradford, who edited an American edition of Adrian Balbi's geography before turning to atlases of his own, had a particular interest in capturing new political geography accurately, and by this date he was among the earliest American mapmakers to show Texas as its own independent country. This Maryland sheet reflects the same careful, schoolroom-oriented engraving standard he applied across his broader atlas, recording the state's towns, rivers, and topography with a scale of miles provided at the map's foot.

Annapolis holds its long-standing place as Maryland's capital, chosen generations earlier for its position on the Chesapeake's western shore near the mouth of the Severn River. Baltimore, by contrast, had by 1838 grown into the state's dominant commercial city, its harbor driving Maryland's trade far beyond anything Annapolis handled. Frederick, further inland, anchors the map's western panhandle inset as the principal town of a narrow, mountainous stretch of Maryland squeezed between Pennsylvania and Virginia. The inset itself is a practical necessity rather than a decorative addition, letting Bradford show the panhandle's terrain and towns at a scale that would have been illegible if drawn at the same proportion as the rest of the state.

This 1838 Bradford edition suits a Maryland family with roots anywhere from the Chesapeake shore to the western panhandle, a Baltimore or Frederick transplant, or a collector pairing it with Bradford's 1835 first-edition Kentucky map, also carried in this store. Where the store's other Maryland-region sheets, the 1676 Speed-Lamb and 1745 Homann Heirs maps, cover Maryland only as part of a broader multi-colony view, this Bradford map is the only one in the collection devoted to Maryland alone, with the added detail the inset format makes possible. It ships unframed and is available in a full range of sizes.