I am forwarding this from another list which was sent by
From: Karen Stuart <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2000 08:34:27 -0400 (EDT)

The announcement of this new American Memory collection is
being sent to a number of lists. Please accept our apologies for
any duplicate postings.

The most recent addition to the American Memory online collections
”The American Revolution and Its Era: Maps and Charts of North
America and the West Indies, 1750-1789” presents an important
historical record of the mapping of North America and the Caribbean
online. Advancements in mapmaking tools and the onset of the
French and Indian War and, later, the American Revolution, created
a flurry of activity in European and North American mapmaking
and publishing. This online collection will include well over two
thousand different maps and manuscripts, with easily as many
or more unnumbered copies, many with distinct colorations and
annotations.  This collection can be found at the following url:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/armhtml/armhome.html

Almost six hundred of these items are original manuscript drawings,
a large number of which are the work of such famous mapmakers
as John Montresor, Samuel Holland, Claude Joseph Sauthier,
John Hills and William Gerard De Brahm. They also include
many maps from the personal collections of William Faden,
Admiral Richard Howe and the comte de Rochambeau, as well
as large groups of maps by three of the best eighteenth-century
map publishers in London: Thomas Jefferys, William Faden and
Joseph Frederick Wallet Des Barres. Historical cartographers can
compare multiple editions, states, and impressions of several of
the most important maps of the period, follow the development of
a particular map from the manuscript sketch to the finished printed
version and its foreign derivatives, and examine the cartographic
styles and techniques of surveyors and mapmakers from six
different countries: Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Holland,
Italy, and the United States.

Most of the items presented here are documented in “Maps and
Charts of North America and the West Indies, 1750-1789: A Guide
to the Collections in the Library of Congress” compiled by John R.
Sellers and Patricia Molen van Ee in 1981. The online essay
”Mapping the American Revolution and Its Era” is taken from this
bibliography.

Please direct any questions about this collection to [log in to unmask]