Carte De La Virginie Et Du Maryland Dressee sur la grande carte Angloise de Mrs. Josue Fry et Pierre Jefferson (First State, with Lord Fairfax Line Shown), 1755

A copperplate border-colored map of Virginia and Maryland. A striking example of the single sheet version of the seminal Fry-Jefferson map, engraved by Elisabeth Haussard and published in Paris by Robert De Vaugondy, for the 'Atlas Universel.'
A well-executed reduction of Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson's landmark map was originally issued separately and later appeared in Jefferys' 'American Atlas.'
The result is a beautiful single folio sheet example of Virginia and Maryland's most sought after and recognizable 18th Century map. While the title is in French, virtually all of the place names and annotations are in English. The map provides a fabulously detailed look into pre-revolutionary war Virginia and Maryland, extending west to the Alleghany Mountains, and including Delaware and a portion of New Jersey, as well as the region around Philadelphia.

Originally prepared by Joshua Fry of William & Mary and Peter Jefferson (father of President Thomas Jefferson), at the request of Lord Halifax in 1748, the Fry-Jefferson was a monumental leap forward in the mapping of the region. It is the first map to accurately depict the Blue Ridge Mountains and the first to lay down the colonial road system of Virginia. Many plantations are located and include the family names of the Virginia plantation owners of the period. The cartouche, showing a tobacco warehouse and wharf, is one of the earliest printed images of the Virginia tobacco trade.

One of the first actions of Lord Halifax, upon becoming president of the Board of Trade and Plantations in 1748, was to request information concerning activities in the Frontiers and of potential French encroachments on the British territorial claims. In 1750, the Board required that each colony conduct a comprehensive survey. The acting Governor of Virginia, Col. Lewis Burwell, commissioned Fry & Jefferson to prepare a map of the Virginia colony.

Joshua Fry, a mathematician at the College of William and Mary, and Peter Jefferson, a surveyor, had previously drawn the boundaries of Lord Fairfax's lands in 1746 and surveyed the Virginia-North Carolina boundary in 1749. First issued in 1751, the Fry-Jefferson map incorporates the original surveys of Fry & Jefferson with existing data.
A major revision in 1755 incorporated important information about the western part of the colony from the journals of John Dalrymple and Christopher Gist, the latter of whom is credited in the upper left part of the map with having contributed to the revisions. It is the 1755 edition that forms the basis for the subsequent editions.

Reference: Phillips Atlases 619. Swem 184. Pedley 470, State 1.