1799 Poirson Map of the United States

A beautiful 1799 example of Jean Baptiste Poirson's map of the American Southeast. This map was engraved to illustrate the 1799 first French edition of the naturalist William Bertram's travel narrative describing his explorations in the American Southeast.

A Closer Look

Coverage extends from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic and from Lake Michigan to the Florida Keys and extends no further east than the Delaware River. Cartographically, the topography and river systems are exceptionally well-developed. Settlement is generally limited to lands east of the Allegheny Mountains. Reflecting Bertram's travels, scores of Indian villages are located in the southwestern frontier (present-day Alabama and Mississippi) and Florida. Curiously, the name 'Nouvel Etat de Kentucky' has been applied to the entire territory northwest of the Tennessee River (here R. de Cherokees), as far as Lake Michigan.

William Bartram

William Bartram was an American Naturalist of Pennsylvania Quaker descent. Bartram was appointed Royal Botanist for North America by King George III in 1765 and toured the American Southeast shortly thereafter. In 1773, he embarked upon a second historic exploration of the American Southeast, traveling through parts of Georgia, the Carolinas, and Florida - as covered on this map. Along the way, he recorded flora, fauna, and interactions with Native American peoples, notably the Creek, Cherokee, and Choctaw. He collected some 200 botanical specimens and made countless sketches. Among his discoveries are a tree species he named after Benjamin Franklin (a friend), the Franklin Tree or Franklinia Alatamatha. The Franklin Tree population was decimated by cotton pathogens from the nearby plantations and is now extinct in the wild but survives in cultivation.

Publication History and Census

This map was first published in the 1799 French edition of Bertram's Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida. The 1791 English first edition did not contain a similar large map of the United States. It was republished in a revised 1800 edition, also in French. The map is held by several institutions, as are French editions of Bertram's work, but the separate map is rare to the market.