North America Index Map to Canada and the United States

Article description

Original antique steel engraving, hand colored in outline when published. This North America map shows the East coast from Labrador to Florida and the Bahamas. The individual states are painted beautifully in outline color. The title is engraved in the middle of the right side of the map, above a table of the British colonies and the sea levels of the Welland Canal, the Rideau Canal, the Erie Canal, the Pennsylvania Canal, Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. In the lower left corner is a table of the free Population and the Slaves around 1830 in America. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK), founded in 1826 by Lord Brougham, was a Whiggish London organisation with the high-minded objective of bringing learning to the uneducated working and middle classes. Much of its output was regarded as unreadable, it was not commercially successful, and it was wound up in 1848. Its most enduring legacy is the wonderful set of atlas maps and sought-after town plans published under its auspices, which we stock below. Originally issued in parts by Baldwin & Cradock 1829-32, it was later published as an atlas by Chapman & Hall in 1844 and by Charles Knight between 1844-1852. It continued to be published after the demise of the Society by G. Cox 1852-1853 and Edward Stanford 1857-1870. The maps commonly have original outline colour. Fourteen members of the S.D.U.K. served on the Boundary Commission for the 1832 Great Reform Act. (Wikipedia)

Published under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Usefull Knowledge.