1785 Tardieu / Crevecoeur Map of Nantucket Island, Massachuysetts

Mapping America’s First Great Whaling Island.

This is the earliest obtainable separate map of Nantucket, published in 1787 to illustrate Michel-Guillaume St. Jean de Crèvecoeur's enormously influential Lettres d'un Cultivateur Américain. Appearing just years after American independence, the map introduced European readers to an island that Crèvecoeur celebrated as one of the young republic's most remarkable communities: isolated, prosperous, industrious, and already internationally famous for whaling. His writings helped shape European perceptions of American society and opportunity, giving this map significance far beyond Nantucket's early cartography. It is both an important early map of the island and a visual document of the maritime America that fascinated Crèvecoeur and his European readers.

A Closer Look

Nantucket fills the map, with neighboring Tuckernuck Island depicted separately at upper left. Although modest in size, the map offers a detailed portrait of the island's late 18th-century geography. Roads, ponds, settlements, mills, property divisions, and coastal features are delineated, while numbered locations correspond to extensive keys above and to the right of the map.

The map identifies 32 sites and features, ranging from houses and mills to ponds, meadows, points, and other local landmarks. Among the most prominent are Sherburne, the principal settlement that would later become the town of Nantucket, and Fulling Mill. Property boundaries divide much of the island's interior, while the numerous named coastal features underscore the intimate relationship between Nantucket's inhabitants and the surrounding sea.

The map also preserves a landscape dramatically different from today's densely developed resort island. Settlement remains concentrated in a handful of locations, with broad expanses of pasture and undeveloped land dominating the interior. For Crèvecoeur's readers, these details provided a geographical framework for an island society whose prosperity seemed all the more remarkable because of its remote and seemingly inhospitable setting.

Crèvecoeur's Nantucket

Nantucket occupies an especially important place in Crèvecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer. He devoted several letters to the island and its inhabitants, fascinated by the emergence of a prosperous maritime society on a sandy island with limited agricultural potential. Nantucketers had turned outward to the Atlantic, building an economy around whaling, shipping, and maritime commerce that connected their small community to distant oceans and international markets.

To Crèvecoeur, Nantucket demonstrated the transformative possibilities of American society. Its prosperity appeared to arise not from aristocratic privilege or inherited wealth, but from industry, cooperation, commerce, and adaptation to the local environment. His depiction inevitably idealized the community, but it helped make Nantucket one of his most compelling examples of the distinctive society emerging in the new United States.

Letters of an American Farmer

Crèvecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer became one of the most influential European accounts of life in the newly independent United States. The work presented America as a society of unusual abundance and opportunity, populated by independent farmers, merchants, and mariners who created prosperous communities far removed from Europe's entrenched social hierarchies.

The book profoundly influenced European perceptions of the young republic and contributed to the powerful image of America as a place where ordinary Europeans could establish new, prosperous lives. Howes characterized it as a 'description of American life of great influence in attracting European immigration in the post-revolutionary period,' further praising it as literature 'unexcelled by any American work of the eighteenth century.'

Publication History and Census

The map was engraved in 1785 by Pierre-François Tardieu, whose imprint appears beneath the lower border, and published two years later in the 1787 French edition of Crèvecoeur's Lettres d'un Cultivateur Américain. It derives from the map accompanying the 1783 English edition of Letters from an American Farmer, but Tardieu substantially refined the presentation, producing a more elegant and accomplished engraving for the French audience. The same work included a companion map of Martha's Vineyard.

The Crèvecoeur maps represent the earliest separate printed maps devoted specifically to Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, with Tardieu's versions among the earliest obtainable maps focused on either island. Their importance lies not only in their cartographic primacy, but also in their association with one of the most influential descriptions of the newly independent United States published for a European audience. Separate examples are desirable and appear only occasionally on the market.

Cartographer

Pierre François Tardieu (1711 - 1771) was a French engraver and mapmaker active in Paris during the middle part of the 18th century and a member of the large and prolific Tardieu family. Several members of the family established themselves as engravers, and, for over 200 years, the family produced works. Pierre Francois Tardieu was born around 1711 in Paris, son of Jean Tardieu. His uncle, Nicolas-Henry Tardieu, taught him the art of engraving. Pierre was a general engraver whose work was not limited to maps but also included historical and genre works. Many of his maps are extremely significant and include some of the finest French productions of the period. Tardieu had his office at Rue de al Corderie, Paris. Tardieu was married to Marie-Anne Rousselet (1733-1826), whose family included the engraver Gilles Rousselet and the sculptor Jean Rousselet. It is highly likely that Pierre Francois Tardieu was succeeded by Pierre Antoine Francois Tardieu (1757 - 1822), who is also possibly his son, as the latter continued to engrave under the P. F. Tardieu imprint well after the former's death.   Further Details...

Source

Crevecoeur, Michel Guillaume St. Jean de, Lettres d'un Cultivateur Ameriquain, (Paris) 1787.    

Condition

Very good clean example with wide margins.

References

Phillips (America), p. 389. Howes, W., U.S.iana (1650-1950): A Selective Bibliography in which are Described 11,620 Uncommon and Significant Books Relating to the Continental Portion of the United States, #C883.