1748 / 1849 Pease French-English Bilingual Map of Lake Champlain

An informative 1849 hand-colored map of Lake Champlain, noting forts and land plots of French settlers. It was produced by Richard H. Pease for E. B. O'Callaghan's 1851 book The Documentary History of the State of New York, a critical reference work for historians of the state and of early America.

A Closer Look

Oriented towards the east, with north at left, the map covers Lake Champlain, with Missisquoi Bay and the Richelieu River at left and Lake George and the Hudson River at right. A series of letters and numbers correspond to indexes, which appear in French at the top and in English at the bottom, detailing forts, land plots (grants), trading posts, geographic landmarks, and other features. The English had built some structures in the early 18th century, but the lake was primarily a French area on the frontier of English colonial settlements at this time, setting it up as a battleground in the French and Indian War (1754 - 1763). The 'Maison de Lidius' illustrated at right (49), became the site of Fort Lyman, built by the English in 1755, later renamed Fort Edward.

Publication History and Census

This map was lithographed by Richard H. Pease in 1849 and is based on an older, mid-18th-century map surveyed by Anger and prepared by de Léry. It appeared in E. B. O'Callaghan's 1851 book, The Documentary History of the State of New York. The map is independently cataloged in the OCLC among the holdings of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, the University of Chicago, the New York State Library, Harvard University, Carleton University, Western University (Ontario), and the Fenimore Art Museum. It is also held by the Bennington Museum and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.