New England
Cartographer:
Hubbard, William
Date of Creation:
1677
New England, John Foster, 1677
A Map of New England, Being the first that ever was here cut, and done by the best Pattern that could be had, which being in some places defective, it made the other less exact; yet does it sufficiently shew the Scituation of the Country, and conveniently well the distance of places. In: William Hubbard’s A Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New-England… John Foster, London (and Boston), 1677. printed by Thomas Parkhurst. Woodcut.
Two nearly identical woodblocks were made for this map. The first, printed in Boston by John Foster, is first map known to have been printed in America. The second was made in London later the same year from a proof of the Boston block. There are several differences between the Boston and London issues, but they are commonly referred to by their labeling of the White Mountains, shown correctly as White Hills on the Boston printing but as Wine Hills on this, the London block.
Foster’s map accompanied an early account of King Philip’s war (see previous item). It was based on a survey done by William Reed in 1665, and served as a guide to the various battles and sites of the conflict. The map also lent legitimacy to the recently inflated boundaries claimed by Massachusetts: two parallel lines establish the colony’s claimed turf, the northern one plotted through Lake Winnipesaukee, gobbling up much of Maine, and the southern boundary conflicting with the Plymouth Colony’s 1629 charter. A compromise partitioning of the Plymouth boundary, reached in 1664, is also marked, shown as a diagonal line starting near Scituate (Scituat).
In many respects, such as the charting of the Connecticut and Merrimack Rivers, Foster’s map is an improvement over contemporary Dutch maps. Over sixty European settlements are indicated, most being identified by numbers.
Typographical evidence was used to determine which of the two states, the American or English version, was made first – and thus which was the model for the other. The Boston woodblock used inserted typeset to produce many of the place-names, a practice with advantages but that sometimes resulted in sloppy register of the letters. The London block, although its letters were cut entirely out of the wood, imitates the alignment of the Boston block’s typeset – hence the chronology is clear.
The pioneer printer of the American printed map, John Foster, was described as an “ingenious mathemetician and printer” on his epitaph. He had begun printing at “the Sign of the Dove” in Boston in 1674, the very year that a 1664 decree by the General Court, which had forbidden any printing in Massachusetts Bay except Cambridge, was repealed.