New Jersey Map 1856 State Print - Trenton, Newark, Camden

Charles Morse published this map of New Jersey in New York in 1856 as part of his General Atlas of the World, an updated and colored successor to the earlier Morse & Breese North American Atlas of 1845, itself a genuine landmark in American cartographic history as the first atlas produced using the cerographic wax-engraving process that would go on to revolutionize the map trade. That earlier atlas had first appeared in serial form as inserts in the New York Post before being gathered into a separate publication, and Morse's 1856 edition carried the innovation forward while adding hand coloring the original Morse & Breese maps had lacked. This scarce pre-Civil War New Jersey sheet is colored by county and records towns, roads, rivers and townships across a state whose large county boundaries have, notably, changed surprisingly little in the nearly two centuries since.

Trenton anchors the map as state capital on the Delaware River, while Newark governs the state's fast-growing industrial northeast, already tightly linked to New York City across the Hudson. Camden appears opposite Philadelphia on the Delaware's eastern bank, its growth tied closely to its larger Pennsylvania neighbor. The map traces New Jersey's township system in detail, the fundamental unit of local government the state still relies on today, and records the shore towns beginning to develop along the Atlantic coast even as most of the state's economy remained anchored to its river ports and inland farm country.

This map makes a fitting gift for a New Jersey family with roots in its historic river towns, or for a collector interested in the cerographic printing process Morse's earlier atlas helped pioneer, a genuinely important but often overlooked American cartographic innovation. Its scarcity on the market today, a product of the limited print runs typical of Morse's atlas compared to larger contemporary publishers like Colton or Mitchell, adds real collecting interest beyond its content alone. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact print for a study to a large-format piece for an office or den.