[MAP] Johnson's Missouri and Kansas (c. 1860)

[MAP] Johnson's Missouri and Kansas. New York: Johnson & Browning, c. 1860. [10383]

Large double-plate hand-colored map, 46 x 67.5 cm (18 x 26 3/4 inches), clean, suitable for framing. We repaired a short tear in the margin at the bottom of the fold, and reinforced part of it from the bottom side. Will ship folded at center, as found. Removed from a bound volume, Johnson's New Illustrated Family Atlas. Good. Map.

This map shows roads, railroads, mail routes, rivers, counties, and locales. The western part of Kansas is open country with no counties established west of Washington, Clay, Dickison, or Chase. The counties are hand-painted in colors. There are inset engravings of Spearing Fish; Fire on the Prairie; and Santa Fé, from the Great Missouri Trail. This is an historic 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.