1864 Schonberg Map of Florida

This is a rare 1864 map of Florida by Schönberg and Company, a printer and map publisher based in New York City and active in the 1850s and 1860s. The map shows all of eastern Florida, and in an inset map shows the western portion of the state. The map shows 37 counties, differentiated by color. Topography is shown pictorially.

Railroads

In addition to the Pensacola and Georgia Railroad connecting Tallahassee and Jacksonville, the map shows the St. Johns Railway (connecting St. Augustine with the St. Johns River) and the Florida Railroad. This line, running from the Atlantic coast at Fernandina to Cedar Key, was the longest railroad to be completed in Florida before the start of the American Civil War (1861 - 1865). However, it did not survive the war unscathed. The Union Navy raided Cedar Key 1862, destroying the railroad's rolling stock and buildings; in March of that year they captured Fernandina. In 1864, the Confederate Army pulled up rails from the Florida Railroad to use on a new rail line to Georgia. With such damage to its facilities, the Florida Railroad performed poorly after the war and was auctioned off.

Sumter County and the Second Seminole War

Sumter County is unusually well detailed here. Forts Dade and Armstrong appear here, as well as the Long Swamp. But we see features listed in Sumter County that do not appear on Schönberg's competitors maps: North and south of Guild, there is noted a 'Negro Town' and 'Wahoo Swamp.' These were the Theatre of the Second Seminole War (1835 - 1842), the United States government attempts to force the Seminole Indians (and the Maroon, or 'Black Seminole' populations allied with them) to leave Florida altogether and move to Indian Territory per the Indian Removal Act of 1830. At first, the outgunned and outnumbered Seminoles effectively used guerrilla warfare to frustrate the ever more numerous American military forces, but by the early 1840s, most of the Seminole population in Florida had been killed in battle, ravaged by starvation and disease, or relocated to Indian Territory.

Publication History and Census

Not in Phillips. The map appeared in then 1865 edition of Schönberg's Standard atlas of the World, which appears in only 16 institutional collections. The map is rare: OCLC only lists examples in the Jacksonville Public Library, the Touchton Map Library at Tampa Bay Historical Center, and the University of Southern Florida.