Title Block & Legend

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As noted earlier, there are two versions of this important map, the 1761 printed version, and the 1757 manuscript.

The titles and legends for both are reprinted here.  The manuscript is signed by Samual Langdon while the published version is credited to Langdon and to Colonel Joseph Blanchard.

It is not certain who the actual author of the map is. Samuel Langdon, a prominent minister, is not otherwise known to have been a mapmaker.  But the handwritten title on the manuscript (see below), signed by him, states that portions of the map are based on “several exact Observations & measurements made by the Author.”

On the other hand Joseph Blanchard was a surveyor – in fact there were two Joseph Blanchards, father and son, both of whom were active during the mid 1700s.  The senior Blanchard – a Colonel –  died in 1758.  Joseph Blanchard Sr. (1704-1758) was a noted land surveyor and a military commander who would have known these lands very well. His military efforts included leadership roles in the Louisburg campaign (in Quebec) in the 1740s and the Crown Point expedition in 1755.

His son, Joseph Jr. (1730-180x) was also a surveyor and had some military service as well. The younger Blanchard in 1751 led a team of surveyors who mapped Mason’s Curve, the long colonial land grant boundary which sliced through what is now southwest New Hampshire. It seems likely that measurements and observations by father and son were used in preparation of the map. Certainly their field measurments were more extensive than any made by Samuel Langdon, who was a clergyman for most of his life.  It may be that Samuel Langdon was the draftsman and principal compiler for this map.

The facts on the 1761 map are in most cases the same as shown on the manuscript, so the names and towns shown on the published map are  mostly those of 1757.

The manuscript’s title paragraph and legend provide more details than are given on the 1761 map, so both are reprinted in whole below.

The published version was engraved by Thomas Jefferys, “Geographer to His Majesty” the King, in London.  Jefferys was a prolific map publisher , responsible for many other maps besides this one.  In 1768 he issued the noted “General Topography” atlas which included a second edition of this map.

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The manuscript 1757 edition doesn’t have a decorative title cartouche, but it does have an extensive description, handwritten, apparently by Samuel Langdon.

He supplies the date “AD 1756” but the map is considered to be a 1757 map because of another entry of that date, the entry in the lower left corner reporting that an English fort was destroyed by the French in 1757.

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The legend (“Explanation”) is also more detailed than on the published map.

One of the interesting notes within the legend is Langdon’s note that most of the churches are “…mostly of the Congregational Form but 4 are Presbyterian and one Episcopal”.

The “establishment” church of the early decades was the Congregational Church. Samuel Langdon was the Minister of …….