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New Hampshire. SOTZMANN, D. F./ EBELING, C. D. New Hampshire entworfen von D.F. Sotzmann. [Hamburg: 1796] 26 ¾ x 18 inches. 26 ¼ x 17 ½ inches. Copperplate engraving with original wash color. Lightly toned along fold, else excellent condition. Very scarce. The finest 18th-century map of New Hampshire, including as well adjacent areas of Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont and Quebec. It was one of the earliest maps of New Hampshire after it became a state in 1788. Sotzmann's state maps are "among the rarest of cartographic Americana for the closing decade of the eighteenth century…Only a small number of American collections, among them the Library of Congress and Harvard University, have copies of all ten published maps" (Ristow). This map was one of only 10 produced by Ebeling and Sotzmann out of a proposed 18 for the Atlas von Nordamerika, which was to supplement a multi-volume history of America. Since the atlas was never completed, the maps were published separately, accounting for their rarity. Sotzmann’s maps are also marked by a precision and elegance in their engraving that exceeded that of the maps they were based on. This map of New Hampshire is rich in topographic detail, with waterways and areas of elevation, particularly in the White Mountains, all carefully delineated. State boundaries, county lines, township boundaries, and major roads are all clearly outlined. Counties are differentiated in both outline and wash color, with Grafton at the time occupying the thinly populated northern half of the state. Though the predominant language on the map is German, the legends are bilingual and the prime meridian set at both Washington, D.C. and London. Of particular interest are the straight line running north and east from the Massachusetts border near Winchendon and labeled “Line of Mason’s Patent 1787” and the long arc from Fitzwilliam in the South to Conway in the North, labeled “Mason Curve Line as run by Robt. Fletcher Esqr. in 1769”. These reflect alternative interpretations of the extent of Mason’s Patent, granted by the Plymouth Company to New Hampshire founder John Mason in 1629. In brief, the patent described a wedge of land 60 miles inland from the mouths of the Piscataqua and Merrimack Rivers; it left ambiguous, however, whether the two terminal points were to be joined by a straight line or an arc. Mapmaker Sotzmann’s collaborator,C. D. Ebeling, maintained a correspondence with leading lights of American science, who provided the source material, both printed and manuscript, that Sotzmann sifted, compiled and reconciled with a highly critical eye. In the case of this map, there is no question that Sotzmann chose as his base map Samuel Holland’s Topographical Map of the State of New Hampshire (London: William Faden, 1784). Though it appeared in 1784, Holland’s map was based on surveys conducted in the 1760s; Sotzmann thus added more up-to-date material from Jeremy Belknap’s New Map of New Hampshire (Philadelphia, 1791). The most apparent changes include the names of certain townships, the addition of county names, and a more generous interpretation of new Hampshire’s border with Quebec. It would be another 20 years before the Sotzmann map would be superseded by Philip Carrigain’s New Hampshire by Recent Survey. Cobb, D. A. New Hampshire Maps to 1900 #75; Graffagnino, Shaping of Vermont, #17 (and #4 in accompanying portfolio);Phillips, America p. 247; Rumsey 2746.002; Ristow, W. American Maps and Mapmakers, pp. 169-177.
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