“Old Maps” owner, Dave Allen, is publishing most of his extensive collection of scans of old Vermont State maps for free review and download from his website old-maps.com. Almost 100 maps have been published, and close to half them are pre-1800. This collection includes a copy of the oldest map to use the name Vermont (1780) and the delightful 1784 Sawyer map which shows the wilderness filling up with towns and labeled “Now Commonly called Vermont”. Several maps show long-forgotten town names such as Billymead, Navy, Fulham and Phildelphia. One of Allen’s favorites is the 1796 map which shows “Camel’s Rump” as the title of that well known mountain. “It’s not a misspelling, that’s what those old-timers called it” said Allen. “The same usage appears on several other maps all the way through mid-century. Not until 1842 have I found a map with the modern, more polite spelling”

Over the last decade, Allen has acquired these images from a variety of sources including the Library of Congress, the Vermont and New Hampshire Historical Societies and other public and private archives. “Instead of storing them on my computer, let other people have access to these wonderful old maps” said Allen. He hopes this will encourage study and analysis, and also more visits to his website.

To view this free collection, visit the website at www.old-maps.com. If you have any questions, or would like to order a print, please call 413-772-2801 or email info@old-maps.com.

Allen will have a booth and a display of old maps prints at Vermont History Expo next weekend, June 26-27 at Tunbridge, VT.

Here are some photos from that 2-day event.  Our booth was in Floral Hall, the building with the genealogy groups.

We set up the exhibit space on Thursday, building a “leaning wall” on one side of the room to display a variety of old state maps, and a temporary counter on the opposite side where we sold CDs, town maps, and birds eye views etc. The Expo event was Saturday and Sunday.

Click on a picture to see a better view.

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The county maps on CDROM are very popular – dozens of old maps on each CD (1850s and 1870s for each Vermont County)

People love to browse through the sample printouts from the CDROMS.

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The 1850s CDROMs are scans of large wall maps like this one of Orleans, Lamoille and Essex Counties.  The sign on top of the map points to the home place  house of  Paulina Darling, who lived in Morristown.

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To make it easier for more people to see these wonderful old Vermont maps, we posted about 20 maps on the outside of some Expo buildings.  Here a youngster is looking at the 1860 Map of Vermont.

Below is a better photo of that map with publisher David Allen. The remarkable map measures over five feet square and shows every house and road in the state of Vermont.

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