Boston Rare Maps

Specializing in antique American maps & prints

Recent acquisitions

A scarce, quirky and decorative map of the New Sweden colony

A fascinating 18th-century map of the mid-Atlantic region, including the short-lived colony of New Sweden. Engraved in Upsala, Sweden by Jonas Silfverling, it was typically issued as a folding plate in Eric Tobias Biorck’s Dissertatio Gradualis de Plantatione Ecclesiae Svecanae in America. According to Streeter the Dissertatio was “the first book written by a native […]

Sauthier-Faden map of the 1776 New York campaign, including the Battle of White Plains

The most detailed period battle plan of the Fall 1776 New York campaign, which culminated in the October 28 Battle of White Plains. The campaign was a major defeat for the Americans and compelled the Continental Army to withdraw to New Jersey. The map depicts the theatre of war in October-November of 1776, a 1000-square […]

Schoolboy manuscript map of Kentucky, drawn on the frontier

A schoolboy map of Kentucky, remarkable for its size, excellent detail, Kentucky origins and superb provenance. “School” maps are frequently encountered on the antiquarian market; indeed, we have handled perhaps two dozen in the past decade. However, the vast majority of surviving examples were produced in New England, New York and Pennsylvania, and it is […]

The World in Miniature … with Victoria and Albert at the center!

The only known example of The Microcosm or World in Miniature, an intensely Anglo-centric pictorial image of the world published at the height of the British Empire. The image features a circular diagram representing the world, with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at the center, surrounded by hundreds of individuals representing the many nations and […]

Striking bird’s-eye view of the theatre of civil war in the Mid-Atlantic

John Bachmann’s striking bird’s-eye view of the theatre of civil war in the Mid-Atlantic, issued to capitalize on patriotic enthusiasm in the early months of the conflict. Already by June 1861 Bachmann had issued a pioneering bird’s eye view of eastern Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. For the first time in the United States, […]

Atlas of the Upper Ohio River: “Perhaps the most extraordinary county atlas” (Rumsey)

An incredibly ambitious atlas of the upper Ohio River Valley, interspersed with dozens of engaging lithographic views of the region’s human and natural landscape. The maps includes a key sheet, a 26-part strip map covering 457 miles of the Ohio River Valley, and dozens of city and town plans including very large folding plans of […]

A great rarity, prepared for the Cherokee Outlet Land Run

A large, privately printed and extraordinarily rare map of the Cherokee Outlet prepared for the use of homesteaders in advance of the 1893 Land Rush. Background The 1836 Treaty of New Echota, concluded by the Jackson Administration, forced the Cherokee to cede all lands east of the Mississippi. In return they were granted a 228-mile […]

Armour and Company makes the case that meat packing matters

A vibrant persuasive map of the United States by meatpacking giant Armour and Company, making the case for the strategic importance of its industry. Founded in the 1860s by Philip Danforth Amour (1832-1901), Armour and Company was a meatpacking pioneer, using refrigeration, assembly-line methods, canning and economies of scale to become the industry leader. For […]

Top-secret map of the key crossroads town of Carentan, prepared for D-Day

A rare “Top Secret” map depicting the area around Carentan, a key Normandy crossroads and the scene of ferocious fighting from June 6-13, 1944. The town’s capture by elements of the 101st Airborne Division consolidated the Omaha and Utah beachheads, giving American forces a continuous defensive line to face German counterattacks. The map was issued […]

Top-secret Sainte-Mère-Eglise, the first French town liberated on D-Day

A rare “Top Secret” map depicting the area around Sainte-Mère-Eglise, a key Normandy crossroads and the first town liberated during Operation Overlord. The map was issued just weeks before D-Day, and has provenance to the aide-de-camp to U.S. Army Major General Harold W. Blakely (1893-1966), commander of the 4th Infantry Division, which spearheaded the landing […]

1982 David Horsey map of The World According to Ronald Reagan

An entertaining 1982 persuasive map by David Horsey offering a liberal caricature of Ronald Reagan’s Cold Warrior world view. The map uses a pictorial style to depict the United States and Soviet Union wildly out of scale with the rest of the world. Reagan in full gunfighter regalia stands astride a hypertrophied California, while Leonid […]

Rare 18th-century paper instrument with an unusual flat earth projection

A rare and unusual instrument, featuring a volvelle with a distinctive flat earth projection of the world. One of only three examples located. The instrument consists of a large engraved diagram mounted on a heavy pasteboard backing, as issued. The central feature of the diagram is a map of the world projected on a single […]

Mapping medications and their effects on the body

A rare and most unusual allegorical map, in which physician George-Christoph Würtz (1756-1823) arranged differing herbal simples according to their natural “affinity,” that is, based on the degree to which each consisted more or less of air, earth, fire (“phlogiston”), or water. The simples are arranged secondarily according to their effects on the human body, […]

With the first gastronomic map

A small volume of essays on food, food science, food culture and related topics, illustrated by a pioneering gastronomic map of France. Author Cadet de Gassicourt (1769-1821) was an illegitimate son of Louis XV and a lawyer, chemist and apothecary. He was also a member of the Caveau Moderne, a men’s dining and social club […]

Humphrey Phelps offers the World at One View

An appealing, richly pictorial broadside map designed to impart to its American viewers, in a single, composite image, a sense of the wider world and by implication, their country’s place in it. World at One View is centered on a double-hemisphere world map, whose most interesting feature is a projected trans-continental railroad from New York […]

Ravenstein’s Plastischer Schul Atlas

An early edition of the Plastischer Schul Atlas … the first commercially-produced set of raised relief maps, intended for teaching purposes. This charming atlas includes matched sets of eight relief and eight sheet maps of the world, the six continents and Germany. The printing on the two sets is identical, though the coloring of the […]

Monumental chart of Chesapeake Bay by George Eldridge

A mammoth George Eldridge chart depicting in detail the waters of Chesapeake Bay and its tributary rivers, most notably the James, York, Rappahannock, the Potomac (extending upstream to Washington, D.C.) and the Patuxent (to Baltimore). An inset at upper right, probably added for the 1888 edition, extends the coverage to Havre de Grace, Maryland. Thousands […]

The Black Panthers publish a map of “guerilla acts of sabotage and terrorism” in the U.S.

An issue of the weekly newspaper published by the Black Panthers, featuring a most interesting thematic map of “acts of sabotage and terrorism in the United States.” The Black Panther newspaper was first published in 1967, and over its 13-year run became an important vehicle for the Black Panthers’ campaign to raise consciousness, organize at […]