[MAP] Johnson's Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia and Maryland (c. 1861)

[MAP] Johnson's Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia and Maryland. New York: Johnson and Browning, c. 1861. [10405]

Large double-plate hand-colored map, 46 x 67.5 cm (18 x 26 3/4 inches), clean, suitable for framing. We repaired a split at the map fold, repairing it with archival pH neutral tape, from the bottom side only. It is faintly visible from the front, if you know it is there. The thin darker line that you might notice along the fold center is not from the repair but is from the original paste that held this into the atlas. This will still display nicely. Priced to reflect the repair. Removed from a bound volume, Johnson's New Illustrated Family Atlas. Good. 

This map shows the roads, railroads, canals, towns, cities, and counties. It has vignette illustrations of the University of Virginia, the Dismal Swamp Canal, and of the City of Baltimore. The map bears the plate nos. 29 & 30.

The Johnson and Browning imprint dates this map between 1860 and 1862. 

This is one of the last maps to show all of Virginia before West Virginia became its own state in June of 1863.

This is an historic, early, and rare American Civil War era map. 

Alvin Jewett Johnson (1827-1884), b. Wallingford, Vermont; school teacher, for some years a book and map seller for J. H. Colton and Co. After some efforts at publishing his own maps, Johnson found success with his Family Atlas, publishing them in Richmond, Virginia and in New York City beginning in 1860. He and his partner Ross C. Browning (1822-1899) evidently purchased rights to Colton's maps, as they appear in the first Johnson's Family Atlas. Johnson updated his maps as cartography became more accurate, and Atlases during the 1860's were bound with maps bearing various dates until that particular map was updated. Johnson and Browning maps were published 1860-1862; Johnson and Ward were years 1862-1866; maps published by A. J. Johnson, A. J. Johnson and Son, A. J. Johnson & Co., date from 1866-1887.

Johnson's hand-colored maps are known for their accuracy to detail and are an important record of internal improvements and westward expansion. All are suitable for framing and valued by collectors.