Holme, Thomas | The first map of Pennsylvania

Holme, Thomas

A Mapp of ye Improved Part of Pensilvania in America Divided into Countyes Townships and Lotts. London: "Surveyed by Tho: Holme Sold by P. Lea at ye Atlas and Hercules in Cheapside," [ca. 1687 or 1688]

Copper engraving (sheet size: 611 x 519 mm). Handcolored in outline, inset plan of the "City of Philadelphia two miles in Length and Breadth" and "Reference to the Settlements of the Inhabitants of Chester and Bucks counties" at upper center, wide margins; minor marginal toning, a few stray spots and stains, primarily marginal, a few minor marginal repaired. Half red morocco clamshell case.

The rare first issue of the first map of Pennsylvania

Thomas Holme was appointed Surveyor General of Pennsylvania by William Penn in April 1682, the year after the colony was chartered. In May of 1687, Holme, at Penn's request, he forwarded a manuscript map to London, which gave a detailed portrait of the extent of settlement up to that date. The manuscript survey was published as a six-sheet wall map in late 1687, of which only a handful of copies have survived. The present version, engraved by John Harris, was published by Philip Lea shortly thereafter. 

The present map is the most detailed and complex for any English American colony of the seventeenth century. William Penn had intended that that map should be used for promotional purposes, and it offers the boundaries, as well as the owners, of every settled tract of land in the colony. Holme's was the first map of Philadelphia, and in its printed form, the first obtainable for any English American city.

REFERENCE

Celebration of My Country 15; Burden 669; Deák, Picturing America 72; Phillips 670; Snyder, City of Independence 22-25; Streeter sale 945