1846 Mitchell Map of Wisconsin (First Edition!)

This is a first edition 1846 Samuel Augustus Mitchell map of Florida. The map depicts the region from Lake Pepin to Lake Michigan and from Lake Superior to Illinois and Iowa. At this point in American history, Wisconsin was still a territory and would not be granted statehood until May 29, 1848, over two years after this map was published. Here, only the southeastern portion of Wisconsin is illustrated as having been divided into counties and surveyed. The familiar grid of the Public Land Survey System divides this portion of the territory, while the rest of the territory remains unsurveyed. Counties are labeled and shaded different colors to allow for easy differentiation. Cities and towns are identified, including Madison, Milwaukee, and Sheboygan. Crawford and St. Croix Counties occupy the vast majority of the territory. Crawford County was one of Wisconsin's original counties and originally covered the western half of present-day Wisconsin. It was transferred from Michigan to the newly formed Wisconsin Territory as the former prepared for statehood and was slowly divided until it reached its current size.

Carver's Claim

Jonathan Carver (April 13, 171 - January 31, 1780) was a British explorer of colonial America and writer. Carver became the first English-speaking explorer to travel through modern-day Wisconsin when he arrived in the area in 1766. He spent from 1766 - 1767 exploring the territory and developed great relationships with the Indians. Carver returned to England in 1769 hoping to recover the costs of his expedition. Unfortunately he was never able to do so, even though he believed that he had been legitimately hired by the Crown to conduct his exploration. He died in poverty in 1780, but managed to write a bestseller before his death, Travels through the Interior Parts of North America. It was not until the third edition of his book was published in 1781 that the idea of 'Carver's Claim' first appeared. His editor included a comment in the book that they had seen a deed supposedly dated at the 'Great Cave, May the 1st, 1767', that granted Carver and his family 'the whole of a certain tract or territory of land'. Per this description, the claim encompassed some 10,000 square miles of territory. One problem existed, however: the deed had vanished after the death of Carver's widow.

Undeterred, Carver's heirs hired Rev. Samuel Peters (1735 - 1825), a Connecticut Loyalist who had fled to England at the start of the American Revolution, to track down the deed. Peters would, of course, be compensated in land once he found the deed. He was never successful in locating the deed, but still decided to return to the United States to petition Congress to honor the claim. After years of unsuccessfully badgering Congressmen, and the War of 1812, Congress decided that Peters needed the Sioux to verify the deed's existence and its terms. Two separate expeditions set out in 1817 to consult the Sioux. One, made up of two of Carver's grandsons, successfully met with Sioux elders, who told them that the chiefs who supposedly signed the deed never existed. The second, of which the 83-year-old Rev. Peters was a member, never encounted the Sioux after being held up for months at Prairie du Chien. Finally, on January 29, 1823, Congress stated that Peters and Carver's heirs had no claim to the land. They argued that English law at the time of the supposed deed prohibited land grants to private individuals. Plus, they added, Carver had never made any claims to the land while he was alive.

Publication History

This map was first published by Henry Schenck Tanner in 1842 and Carver's Claim was shaded a different color to make it stand out. It was subsequently published by Carey and Hart after their acquisition of the Tanner printing plates with the addition of the green border around Tanner's pink border and engraved by Burroughs. It was then published by Samuel Augustus Mitchell with the Carey and Hart border after removing Burrough's imprint from the bottom border as page thirty-three in the 1846 edition of his A New Universal Atlas. A subsequent 1846 edition was published by Mitchell featuring his trademark border and we believe no other changes. The 1848 edition is the first time that significant changes to the plate are noticeable.