Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut in 1836 - Boston, Providence, Hartford

David Hugh Burr published this map of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut in 1836, part of the Universal Atlas that established him as one of the most important names in American cartographic history. Burr trained as a surveyor under Simeon DeWitt in New York before compiling the second state atlas ever issued in the United States, and by the 1830s he was serving as official topographer for the United States Post Office, a role that gave him access to survey data few contemporary publishers could match. Contemporaries widely regarded Burr's atlas as the most elegant American commercial production of its era, distinguished by its wash coloring and refined engraving, qualities fully on display in this tri-state sheet.

The map shows the large county configurations of all three states, boundaries that Burr's own notes observe have changed surprisingly little in the nearly two centuries since this plate was engraved. Boston anchors Massachusetts as the region's commercial and political capital, Providence sits at the head of Narragansett Bay as Rhode Island's principal port and seat of government, and Hartford, one of Connecticut's two joint capitals at the time, presides over the Connecticut River valley. Together the three states, then among the most densely settled and industrially developed in the young republic, appear here in the elegant style that made Burr's atlas the standard against which other American publishers of the period were measured.

This map is a fitting gift for a family with roots anywhere across southern New England, for a transplant now settled in Boston, Providence, or Hartford, or for a collector of Burr's celebrated Universal Atlas. It is offered unframed in a range of sizes.