1798 Wigram Map Columbia County, New York (1850 reissue)

A fine example of David Vaughan's 1850 reissue of John Wigram's 1798 ornate map of the towns of Livingston, Germantown, and Clermont in Columbia County, New York. It was produced for The Documentary History of the State of New-York, an important reference work for the early history of the state.

A Closer Look

The map covers the Hudson River to the boundary of Massachusetts. Multiple homesteads, family names, farms, mills, roads, churches, rivers, lakes, and various other topographical details are identified. Notably, individual landowners are recorded in significant detail. The boundaries of the towns named in the title, as well as neighboring towns, are also drawn.

American Aristocrats

The Livingston Manor is identified along the Hudson River. This should not be confused with the hamlet of Livingston Manor further west in Sullivan County, named in honor of the same family. The original Livingston Manor seen here was a massive land grant along both sides of the Hudson River. Palatine German refugees worked the land in the early 18th century, mostly cutting timber for the Royal Navy, the origin of the name Germantown.

Aside from their eponymous manor, the Livingston family also were Lords of the Claremont Manor to the south of Germantown (not noted here, but perhaps the home marked 'Madam Livingston'). Descendants of the Livingstons include Presidents George H. W. and George W. Bush, Eleanor Roosevelt, members of the Astor family, and Robert R. Livingston, a Founding Father who signed the Declaration of Independence.

Publication History and Census

This map was originally drawn by John Wigram in 1798. David Vaughan, a cartographer working for the State Engineer and Surveyor, accessed and copied the original in the late 1840s, and his drawing was then engraved by R. H. Pease for publication in The Documentary History of the State of New-York. Wigram's original is only held by the State Library of New York in Albany, while Vaughan's 1850 reissue is cataloged among the holdings of the New York Historical Society, the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Library of Congress, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the University of California Los Angeles, while the entire Documentary History of the State of New-York is more widely distributed in institutional collections.