Freyhold, Edward
Edward Freyhold (May 12 1824 - November 29 1892, born Eduard Otto Gotthilf Julius von Freyhold) was a German-born American cartographer, topographer and draughtsman. Nothing is known about his education and training, but his long association with fellow German immigrant Julius Bein suggests that from an early age he worked with that map publisher, perhaps as an apprentice. He served in the Pennsylvania Infantry from 1861 to 1866, and his skills as a draughtsman and mapmaker were for decades placed at the service of his adopted homeland. Freyhold became a prominent topographer and draughtsman whose work can be found on numerous maps of the West for the government and the railroads, appearing in print between 1853 and 1879. Map scholar Carl Wheat rhapsodized about his work:
Edwin (sic) Freyhold… was an unrivaled expert in this type of work. His penned originals are almost unbelievably delicate, and must be examined with a powerful magnifying glass to be appreciated... Freyhold was later the author of a beautiful map of the Transmississippi West published in 1868. It contains all the material he could locate resulting from explorations and surveys made subsequent to those used by Warren. No other maps of this region, even those of the present day, seem superior to these two great maps in workmanship. ... A Freyhold manuscript map, however, is... something of great beauty.
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