Artist/Maker

Homann, John Baptist __Cartographer

Place Made

Date Made

1709-1719

Medium

paper –ink

Dimensions

HOA:30″; WOA: 33 1/2″ Framed
HOA: 19 7/16″; WOA: 23″ Unframed

Accession Number

5443

Description

This map printed in Nuremburg was meant to encourage German migration to the American colonies. Homann paid particular attention to the depiction of German-speaking settlements. This is the first map to depict Germanna, Alexander Spotswood’s mining community at the headwaters of the Rappahannock River in Virginia.

The roccoco cartouche of this map was also meant to aid in attracting settlers. It depicts a neatly dressed European atop the social hierarchy and surrounded by the wealth of the new world.

RELATED OBJECTS: MESDA owns a fireback cast at Spotswood’s Tubal Furnace in 1725 for Rosewell, Gloucester County, Virginia (MESDA acc. 3956)

SOURCES: Homman likely derived his geography from Visscher’s 1709 “Nova Tabula… Borealiorem Americae”; For North Carolina in particular he likely relied on either Gascoyne’s 1682 or Thornton’s 1685 map.

DESCRIPTION: Hand colored black and white engraving on paper; full title inside scalloped shell in the cartouche: “VIRGINIA/MARYLAND/et/CAROLINA/IN AMERICA SEPTENTRIONALI/Britannorum industria excultae/repraesentatae/a/Ion. Bapt. Homann S.C.M. Geog./Norimberg” ; the cartouche in the bottom right corner also contains images of Native Americans and symbolic elements.

REFERENCES: Cumming, The Southeast in Early Maps, 156
Pritchard and Taliaferro, Degrees of Latitude, 17

History

Issued first as part of Homann’s 1714 “Atlas Novus Norimbergae”.

Credit Line

Gift of Michael and Carolyn McNamara