A wonderfully detailed portrait of the Hudson River Valley in 1864, when it remained one of the great arteries of American commerce and travel. 

Lloyd’s extraordinary map follows the Hudson from Troy, the head of navigation, south through Albany and the Hudson Highlands to New York Bay (though not quite reaching to Sandy Hook, as promised in the title). To accommodate more than 150 miles of river at a useful scale, the route is divided into four parallel strips, transforming the Hudson into a continuous vertical corridor running across the sheet. If joined end-to-end, the resulting map would extend a whopping 196 inches.

Lloyd packs an enormous amount of information into a narrow band along either bank of the river. Cities and villages are laid out street by street; roads and railroads are traced along both banks, with stations and distances indicated; hills and mountains are rendered in hachures and in many cases given elevations; and docks, factories, mills and other improvements appear throughout. In the countryside individual houses are located and their occupants or owners named, making the map an unusually rich record of settlement and landholding in the Hudson Valley before the industrial and urban growth of the post-Civil War decades.

The river itself also receives some attention: islands, shoals and other obstructions are delineated, while the “steamboat channel” is marked by a dashed line and mileage given along its course. At the southern end New York Harbor and Bay are treated in more detail, with extensive soundings and indications of both aids and hazards to navigation.

Sources
The title panel advertises the map as compiled “from trigonometrical surveys and personal reconnaissance.” The most likely ingredients were U.S. Coast Survey charts for the river and harbor; the large county wall maps of the 1850s for roads, buildings and landowners; railroad maps and publications for lines, stations and distances; and perhaps earlier strip maps of the Hudson for elements of the overall conception.

Thus far, however, comparison with likely sources has produced no decisive match. The hydrography of New York Harbor and Bay resembles in some respects that of the U.S. Coast Survey chart first published in 1844, but differs too substantially to suggest direct copying. Likewise Jay Gould and I. B. Moore’s 1854 “Map of Albany County” and A. E. Rogerson’s 1854 “Map of Rensselaer County” share with Lloyd such features as named landowners, roads and local topography, but also exhibit significant differences. For now, then, it seems safest to view Lloyd’s map as a synthesis of a variety of cartographic sources, perhaps supplemented—as his title claims—by some measure of personal reconnaissance.

Whatever its precise sources, the map captures with unusual richness the transportation landscape that had made the Hudson one of the great arteries of American commerce. Since the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, the river had formed the eastern leg of the principal route linking New York City with the interior of the continent. By 1864 the railroads running along its banks had added another layer to this network without displacing the enormous traffic carried by steamboats and other river craft. Lloyd’s map records this mature transportation system in remarkable detail: river, railroad and road networks crowded into the narrow valley and converging on New York Harbor.

Rare Book Hub records no examples offered on the antiquarian market since one offered in 1999 by High Ridge Books. Another was catalogued as lot 176 of Bonhams Oct. 23, 2019 book sale but subsequently withdrawn. OCLC records perhaps ten examples in institutional collections, plus another two examples of an 1882 edition published in Chicago.

J. T. Lloyd
James T. Lloyd was an unusually energetic map and guidebook publisher active in the years immediately before and during the Civil War, operating principally from New York and for a time advertising a London office as well. His publications ranged from Lloyd’s Steamboat Directory, and Disasters on the Western Waters (1856) to a remarkable series of large-format maps intended to satisfy the enormous wartime appetite for geographical information. Among the latter were Lloyd’s Map of the Southern States (1861), maps of Tennessee and of Kentucky (1862), the Map of the Lower Mississippi River (1862-63), and the Topographical Map of Georgia (1864).

They are immediately recognizable for their large size, vibrant pastel palette and, above all, a combination of bombastic self-promotion and attacks on his competitor, fellow New Yorker H. H. Lloyd. With respect to this rivalry, this map of the Hudson doesn’t disappoint, as the title panel includes this warning:

“The public are cautioned against another “Lloyd” by which name he hopes to deceive the public with spurious “Lloyd’s Maps.” This man’s maps are engraved coarsely on wood, and very erroneous. He follows us with an “imitation of every map we issue.” A Map of the Southern States, issued by him, has FARMINGTON in the place of CORINTH, Miss., and the latter place omitted from his map altogether.”

References
New York State Library, “Annotated Bibliography of Selected New York State Maps: 1793-1900,” #54. OCLC #64024653 et al. New York Public Library, Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, Map Div. 16-5946 and 16-5947. Phillips, List of Maps of America, p. 324, listing only the later 1882 edition.