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

[MAP] Johnson's Nebraska and Kansas. New York: Johnson & Browning, ca. 1860. [11166]

Large hand-colored map, 46 x 36 cm (18 x 14 1/4 inches), clean, suitable for framing. Small nicks to the paper on one edge that will mat out when framed. Some small spots of foxing. Will ship flat. Removed from a bound volume, Johnson's New Illustrated Family Atlas, and is plate no. 51. Good. 

This undated map is version 2.0 in Ira Lourie's Johnson U.S. Map Project and was printed only in the years 1860 and 1861.  Hand-colored in pink and yellow. It shows the largely unsettled Kansas and Nebraska Territories as they existed in 1860. It reveals Forts, Indian lands, mountains, rivers, towns, proposed railroad routes, and trails. It includes the areas of Oregon, Utah, New Mexico, the Dakotas, Minnesota and Missouri as they border the Kansas and Nebraska Territories.

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.