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New York: White, Gallaher & White, 1829. 4to (11.25” x 9.125”), red leather spine with original printed paper over boards. 12 engraved maps (5 double- and seven single-sheet), most with original outline color. Early bookplate of “Walter Gresson, Philadelphia” on front pastedown. Early pencil annotations in and next to the “Introductory Map,” and occasional similar annotations in subsequent maps. CONDITION: Good, light wear to extremities, head and foot of spine chipped; occasional light foxing throughout, contents largely separated from spine, two marginal tears (less than .5”) to “First Map,” no affect to contents.

The first historical atlas of the United States, produced by pioneering educator and mapmaker Emma Willard, this example with intriguing pencil notes bearing on Native American history.

The atlas opens with an “Introductory Map” presenting the “Locations and Wanderings of the Aboriginal Tribes.” Tribal names appear within color-coded oval borders and dotted lines with arrows indicate the path and direction of migration. Lending particular interest to the present copy of this atlas are pencil notes on the “Introductory Map” made by an early owner showing the locations and migrations of the Ottawa and the Shawnee Tribes, and other notes adding numerous Indigenous place names throughout New England. In addition, a pencil list of both colonial and Indigenous names for locales in what is now Massachusetts appears in the upper right margin. These notes raise intriguing questions about the circumstance under which they were added, whether in the classroom or as a result of individual initiative. In any case, they serve as evidence of the student’s close engagement with the map.

The second map, which begins the numbered series, represents the year 1578 and shows numerous ships approaching the coast of North America. A fully colored vignette appears in the upper left, captioned “Queen Elizabeth Signs for Sir Humphrey Gilbert The first patent granted by an English Sovereign to lands within The territory of the United States.” Subsequent maps—for the years 1620, 1643, 1692, 1733, 1763, 1776, and 1789, as well as “the present day,” 1826—include several more vignettes of historic milestones, as well as larger-scale inset maps. The last map shows the “Principal Seats of the War of 1812-13-14.”

The “Introductory Map” was the first to depict tribal migration over several centuries. By placing it outside the numbered series, however, Willard “reinforced the contemporary assumption that Native Americans existed in a timeless space prior to human history” and “established a pattern replicated by historians throughout the century [of] mapping Natives as part of the nation’s natural landscape rather than its political history” (Schulten, Mapping, pp. 25, 26). Willard’s intense nationalism meant that, for her, American history began with Columbus and led inexorably towards the foundation of the United States. This supposedly natural trajectory was based on her idea that “territorial sovereignty formed the foundation of history” (Schulten, Emma Willard, p. 60), and it is further reinforced by the faint outlines of states in the “Introductory Map” and the steadily fading Native American presence in subsequent maps.

First published in 1828, this atlas accompanied Willard’s History of the United States, or Republic of America: Exhibited in Connexion with Its Chronology and Progressive Geography by Means of a Series of Maps. A second edition appeared in 1829 (the edition offered here) and another in the 1830s (see Phillips and OCLC). Together, the History and the Series of Maps put into practice her revolutionary commitment to the interdependence of geography and history. As she put it, “the event fixes the recollection of the place, no less than the place of the event.” 

Emma Willard (née Hart, 1787–1870) was born in Berlin, Connecticut, where she began teaching as a teenager. In 1807 she moved to Middlebury, Vermont, to take a teaching position at a small girl’s school. However, frustrated with the limited subjects available to female students and somewhat unpopular for her attempts to broaden her students’ education, in 1814 Hart, recently married to Dr. John Willard, established a school in her home, known as Middlebury Female Seminary. Determined to prove that women were equally capable of mastering the subjects studied by men, she began teaching her students the same subjects studied by her nephew, a student at nearby Middlebury College. She soon developed a proposal for elevating female education by means of public funding, but after being rebuffed by Vermont lawmakers, moved to New York State, where, with legislative support, she founded the Troy Female Seminary in 1821. This was the first school in the country to offer women an education comparable to that of college-going men, and it soon became “a preeminent school for future teachers and one of the country’s finest institutions of female education” (Schulten, p. 18). After retiring from its management in 1838, Willard continued to lecture and publish widely. Her work inspired a movement that brought higher education to women throughout America and even abroad.

OCLC records just four examples of this second edition of the Series of Maps.

A fascinating annotated example of Emma Willard’s landmark historical atlas.

REFERENCES: Schulten, Susan. Mapping the Nation: History and Cartography in Nineteenth Century America (University of Chicago Press, 2012); Schulten, Susan, ed. Emma Willard : Maps of History (San Francisco: Visionary Press, 2022); Phillips, Atlases 10648; Rumsey 2642; Sabin 104046 (1828 ed.)

Item #7607

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