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Item #30109 [Georgia, with the New Ebenezar Settlement] Plan von Neu Ebenezer. Matthäus SEUTTER.

[Georgia, with the New Ebenezar Settlement] Plan von Neu Ebenezer

Augsburg: Seutter, 1747. Three copper-engraved maps on a single sheet, with full period colour. One margin neatly extended with neat line in facsimile. Sheet size: 19 5/8 x 22 5/8 inches.

The first large-scale map of Georgia, together with the finest plan of one of the American South's most interesting early settlements.

Importantly, this composition includes the first large-scale map that specifically focuses on Georgia, engraved by Tobias Conrad Lotter, which takes up most of the left side of the sheet. The map embraces all of the coastal regions from St.Augustine, Florida up to Charleston, South Carolina. In the centre of the map is the grid outline of the city of Savannah, the capital of Georgia, founded by James Ogelthorpe in 1733. The map details all major settlements, and the trails that connect them. The coast's numerous islands are highlighted in different colours, creating an attractive aesthetic effect. In the lower right corner of this map is an inset detailing St.Simon's Island, the location of a British settlement and Fort Frederica, which was built to protect Georgia's southern flank from both the Spaniards and marauding pirates. The right side of the sheet is dominated by the Plan von Neu Ebenezar, the finest cartographic record of one of the American South's most interesting early settlements. The 'Salzburgers' were a group of Lutherans who fled persecution in heavily Catholic Austria. In 1734, the English Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, a Protestant activist group, sponsored a party of Salzburgers to emigrate to Georgia. They founded the Ebenezar Settlement on a small tributary of the Savannah River (depicted on the previous map), but soon found the location to be unsuitable, and moved their settlement to 'New Ebenezar' on the main river itself. This map is a large detailed plan of this settlement, which was actually designed by Oglethorpe himself, directly modelled on the grid of Savannah. A key decribes various features of this plan, including the location of market squares, public gardens and housing plots. Outside of the town, are details such as plantations, pasturelands, orchards, and a mill. The compostion is finely adorned with a rococo title cartouche, featuring a native bird and flora, and a two-masted ship sailing down the Savannah River. Related to this plan, is the diagram at the lower left of the sheet, an encyclopaedic view of the town's mill. These two maps were originally published on separate sheets, and appeared in Samuel Urlsberger's promotional tract, Aussfürliche Nachricht von den Saltzburischen. This tract was published in parts between 1735 and 1752, and was specifically intended for prospective German immigrants to Georgia. The present maps comprise the most desirable issue, being printed together on a single sheet. This version was included in some copies of the composite atlases published by Seutter in Augsburg.

Cumming, The Southeast in Early Maps, 165 and 264; Deák, American Views, 95; Lane, Savannah Revisited: A Pictorial History, p. 27; Reps, Frontier America, p.247.

Item #30109

Price: $13,500.00

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