1853 Colton Wall Map of Maine

MaineWall-colton-1853
$1,500.00
Colton's Railroad and Township Map of the State of Maine with Portions of New Hampshire, New Brunswick and Canada. - Main View
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1853 Colton Wall Map of Maine

MaineWall-colton-1853

Maine Academy Grants.
$1,500.00

Title


Colton's Railroad and Township Map of the State of Maine with Portions of New Hampshire, New Brunswick and Canada.
  1853 (dated)     39.5 x 32.5 in (100.33 x 82.55 cm)     1 : 570000

Description


This is an 1853 J. H. Colton folding wall map of Maine. The map includes both an important breakdown of Maine's early railroad development, and incorporation of Maine's fascinating 'Academy Grant' system.
A Railroad Map
Railroads are the focus of the map, including the 'Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad', the 'Androscoggin and Kennebec Railroad', the 'Kennebec and Penobscot Railroad', and the 'Portland and Kennebec Railroad'. The 'Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad' was the American half of a railroad meant to connect Portland, Maine and Montreal, Quebec. Two separate railroads, one American (the Atlantic and St. Lawrence) and one Canadian (the St. Lawrence and Atlantic) were chartered to build the route. The line between Montreal and Portland began operations on April 4, 1853, the year this map was published. The 'Androscoggin and Kennebec Railroad' was chartered in 1847 and operational by 1850. In 1862 it merged with the 'Kennebec and Penobscot Railroad' (chartered in 1846) to form the Maine Central Railroad. The 'Kennebec and Portland Railroad' is the oldest railroad in Maine. It was chartered in 1836 and completed in 1851, reorganized as the 'Portland and Kennebec Railroad' in 1862, and was purchased by the Maine Central Railroad in 1874.
A Closer Look
Highly detailed, Maine is divided first into counties (which are all labeled) and then into townships. Each township is either named or numbered, with the majority of the unnamed townships lying in the northern parts of Franklin, Somerset, Piscataquis, Penobscot, and Aroostook Counties. At this point, some townships were only known by their numerical Range and Township identifiers.
Colonial Educational Academy Grants
Some townships, particularly in Aroostook County, are labeled as 'grants', such as 'Grant to Portland Academy', or 'Grant to Belfast Academy'. These grants have an intriguing history tied closely to education development in colonial America. By 1647, a law was passed in Massachusetts stating that towns of one hundred families must have a grammar school. Eventually, the citizenry felt the need for higher education, so academies were established. By 1796, eleven academies had been established, and seven of them were in Maine. As a method of supporting the academies, land grants were made, most often in Maine. Whole and sometimes half townships were given to the academies, with the intention that they would be supported by the sale of the land.
Publication History and Census
This map was created and published by J.H. Colton in 1853. We note four cataloged examples in OCLC which are part of the collections at the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, the Osher Map Library at the University of Southern Maine, and the Bishop's University Library in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada.

Cartographer


Joseph Hutchins Colton (July 5, 1800 - July 29, 1893), often publishing as J. H. Colton, was an important American map and atlas publisher active from 1833 to 1897. Colton's firm arose from humble beginnings when he moved to New York in 1831 and befriended the established engraver Samuel Stiles. He worked under Stiles as the 'Co.' in Stiles and Co. from 1833 to 1836. Colton quickly recognized an emerging market in railroad maps and immigrant guides. Not a cartographer or engraver himself, Colton's initial business practice mostly involved purchasing the copyrights of other cartographers, most notably David H. Burr, and reissuing them with updated engraving and border work. His first maps, produced in 1833, were based on earlier Burr maps and depicted New York State and New York City. Between 1833 and 1855 Colton would proceed to publish a large corpus of guidebooks and railroad maps which proved popular. In the early 1850s Colton brought his two sons, George Woolworth Colton (1827 - 1901) and Charles B. Colton (1832 - 1916), into the map business. G. W. Colton, trained as a cartographer and engraver, was particularly inspired by the idea of creating a large and detailed world atlas to compete established European firms for the U.S. market. In 1855, G.W. Colton issued volume one the impressive two volume Colton's Atlas of the World. Volume two followed a year later. Possibly because of the expense of purchasing a two-volume atlas set, the sales of the Atlas of the World did not meet Colton's expectations and so, in 1856, the firm also issued the atlas as a single volume. The maps contained in this superb work were all original engravings and most bear an 1855 copyright. All of the maps were surrounded by an attractive spiral motif border that would become a hallmark of Colton's atlas maps well into the 1880s. In 1857, the slightly smaller Colton's General Atlas replaced the Atlas of the World, which lacked the border. Most early editions of the General Atlas published from 1857 to 1859 do not have the trademark Colton spiral border, which was removed to allow the maps to fit into a smaller format volume. Their customers must have missed the border because it was reinstated in 1860 and remained in all subsequent publications of the atlas. There were also darker times ahead, in 1858 Colton was commissioned at sum of 25,000 USD by the government of Bolivia to produce and deliver 10,000 copies a large format map of that country. Although Colton completed the contract in good faith, delivering the maps at his own expense, he was never paid by Bolivia, which was at the time in the midst of a series national revolutions. Colton would spend the remainder of his days fighting with the Bolivian and Peruvian governments over this payment and in the end, after a congressional intervention, received as much as 100,000 USD in compensation. Nonetheless, at the time it must have been a disastrous blow. J. H. Colton and Company is listed as one of New York's failed companies in the postal record of 1859. It must have been this that led Colton into the arms of Alvin Jewett Johnson and Ross C. Browning. The 1859 edition of Colton's General Atlas lists Johnson and Browning as the 'Successor's to J. H. Colton' suggesting an outright buyout, but given that both companies continued to publish separately, the reality is likely more complex. Whatever the case may have been, this arrangement gave Johnson and Browning access to many of Colton's map plates and gave birth to Johnson's New Illustrated (Steel Plate) Family Atlas. The Johnson's Atlas was published parallel to Colton's atlas well in to the 1880s. The Colton firm itself subsequently published several other atlases including an Atlas of America, the Illustrated Cabinet Atlas, the Octavo Atlas of the Union, and Colton's Quarto Atlas of the World. They also published a large corpus of wall maps, pocket maps, and guides. The last known publications of the Colton firm date to 1897 and include a map and a view, both issued in association with the Merchant's Association of New York. Alice M. Colton married August R. Ohman (May 3, 1859 - April 22, 1934) on January 5, 1897. In 1898, Ohman joined the Colton firm, which continued to publish as Colton, Ohman & Co. until 1901. More by this mapmaker...

Condition


Very good. Wear along original fold lines. Some toning and soiling along original fold lines. Some soiling in margins. Small areas of infill at a few fold intersections.

References


OCLC 777210732.