Maryland in 1838 - Baltimore, Annapolis, Frederick

Maryland's statewide map is drawn from Thomas G. Bradford's 1838 An Illustrated Atlas, issued by Weeks, Jordan & Co. and Wiley and Putnam. Maryland in 1838 was home to the Baltimore and Ohio, the country's first common-carrier railroad, chartered back in 1827 and still under construction west toward the Ohio River — an ambitious bid by Baltimore's merchants to compete with New York's Erie Canal for western trade, and one that would eventually make Baltimore one of the busiest rail hubs on the Eastern Seaboard. George W. Boynton engraved this sheet at a scale of about 1:950,400, paired with an inset of the state's western section.

Rivers and waterways thread through the map's hand-applied county color, a fitting treatment for one of the original thirteen colonies whose port city was, at that moment, racing to out-build its rivals to the north.

This one tends to resonate with a Maryland family, someone who's left the Chesapeake behind but still claims it, or a collector working through Bradford's 1838 series one state at a time. The print is sold unframed and comes in a variety of sizes.