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A map is a visual representation or depiction of a geographical area or space, typically drawn or printed on a flat surface such as paper or a digital screen.
The oldest map of America is titled "A New and Correct Map of the United States of North America: Layd down from the Latest Observations and Best Authorities Agreeable to the Peace of 1783."
This first U.S. map was engraved, printed, and published by Abel Buell in March of 1784 in a small shop he kept in New Haven, Connecticut. New Haven was the town where he lived the longest and returned to most often. The map was published just six months after the Treaty of Paris.
Today, only seven copies of this oldest published map of the U.S. are known to exist. They survive in major institutions in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain.
Of the seven copies of Buell’s map known to remain, two are in collections in Buell’s home state of Connecticut, Yale University in New Haven, CT and the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History in Hartford, CT.
The Library Of Congress describes it as the first map of the newly independent United States. The New England Historical Society recognizes it as the first American-made map of the United States. Smithsonian defines it as the first map of the United States drawn and printed in America. Yale University mentions it as the first American map of the United States.
In December 2010 one of the surviving copies of Buell’s map set the world record for a map at auction when it sold for $1.8 million dollars at Christie’s in New York.
To print the map, Abel Buell used type that he made himself – the first in the United States. It was made in the type foundry he built, also the first in the United States. He printed the 43”-by-48”map in four sections, coloring it by hand as hand-applied watercolor gave the map its color.
The map covers the territory of the 13 colonies and an area east of the Mississippi River. The state boundaries are very different from those today. For example, Virginia extends from the Chesapeake Bay to the Ohio River.
This landmark oldest map of extraordinary significance to the historical record of the United States was published by Abel Buell in 1784. Notably, this is the first map of the newly independent United States compiled, printed, and published in America by an American.
Additionally, it is also the first map to be copyrighted in the United States as well as the first map printed in America to show the flag of the United States Of America.
Abel Buell (1742–1822), born in Killingworth, Connecticut, was a goldsmith, silversmith, jewelry designer, engraver, surveyor, printer, type manufacturer, mint master, textile miller, and counterfeiter in the American colonies.
He was apprenticed to a silversmith and later practiced that trade with some success. At an early age, however, he got in trouble with the law, using his engraving skills to counterfeit the colonial currency. Because of his youth, he got off with what was considered a light sentence in those days: he had one ear cropped and he was branded on the forehead.
Trinity on the Green in New Haven, Connecticut states that Abel Buell's shop (where his assistant Amos Dolittle also worked) was just around the corner from the church. Now where Yale University stands today. Specifically, his shop was on the present College Street about where Farnam Hall is. Farnam Hall is Yale University's oldest dormitory still in use.
Ultimately Abel Buell either squandered his money or gave it away. He died a pauper in the New Haven Almshouse in 1722. The area is now called The Edgewood Park Historic District which was listed in the National Register of Historic Place on September 9, 1986.
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