Revolutionary War Map of Boston, July 1775

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Set Reminder 2024-01-20 11:00:00 2024-01-20 11:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : Day 1- Rare Books, Fine Art, Silver & Jewelry https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/sarasota-estate/day-1--rare-books-fine-art-silver-jewelry-14620
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• Lot Description
  Revolutionary War Map of Boston, July 1775. This is a great map of Boston during the beginning of the Revolutionary War, with rebel and British positions marked out and notes showing events that took place near Bunker Hill and other strategic sites around the city. The map may be a facsimile, but we are not sure, and we don’t know if the map was drawn by an American or British person, but the Americans were identified as rebels on the map, so it’s very possible it was drawn up by someone on the British side, and things did not go well for the Americans at this early stage of the war. The key in the upper left reads “Map of the Town of Boston and circumjacent Country shewing the present situation of the King’s Troops & the Rebel Intrenchments 25th July 1775.” We thought “entrenchments” was misspelled, but “intrenchments” is actually an acceptable plural form of “entrenchment”. The map shows rebel forces marked in light rectangles and British forces in darker rectangles, the key positions are Bunker Hill, Charlestown, Dorchester, and the harbor of Boston, and notes near Bunker Hill show the British captured Charlestown (the map says “CharlesTown now in Ruins”), and this left the Boston Peninsula in control of the British. A month later General Washington arrived in Boston to take charge of the newly established Continental army, and the tide turned in March 1776 when Washington’s troops placed cannon on Dorchester Heights, which overlooked Boston, and the British were forced to evacuate the city. Truth be told, the British defeated the Americans at Bunker Hill, but it took three attempts by the British to do this: on June 17, 1775, the British mounted an attack against the colonists and the Americans repulsed the first two assaults, but the British captured the rebel redoubt on the third try, largely because the Americans ran out of ammunition. (You can see “rebel redoubt“ on the map - a redoubt is a defensive position usually made of earthworks and stone or brick - and it was located next to Bunker Hill; the majority of fighting took place at the redoubt, which was also called Breed’s Hill.) So the Americans suffered casualties at Bunker Hill and Breed’s Hill, but they inflicted heavy casualties on the British and this gave the Americans hope - it showed they could hold their own against a superior force of British regulars. Phipps’s Farm was an important site in the war, as the Americans opened up a new artillery battery there on December 17, 1775: Phipps's Point stuck out into the Charles River, and this was where the British light infantry and grenadiers landed on April 18, after crossing the river on their way to Concord at the very beginning of the war. You can see “grenadiers & Light Infantry, Dragoons, & Artillery” in notes near the Mill Dam”. Other important sites are the Roxbury Meeting House, Castle Island (which was a stronghold for the British at the beginning of the War), Noddle’s Island, Prospect Hill, Boston Neck, and Dorchester. Prospect Hill was one of the hills closest to Boston and provided a commanding view of Boston, the British fleet at anchor, and the surrounding countryside, and it became part of the defensive line for Americans stretching all the way to Bunker Hill. The Boston Neck was also important: it was an isthmus, a narrow strip of land connecting the city of Boston to the mainland city of Roxbury (now a neighborhood of Boston). Boston was basically a peninsula and could be cut off by whoever controlled the Neck. (On July 8, 1775, during the Siege of Boston, the Neck was the site of a small skirmish between a handful of British regulars and a larger force of Colonial volunteers. Americans won the day and this helped preserve Boston from falling any further into British hands.) Dorchester was important to the defense of Boston too, but most of that story comes later. The British general in charge of the assault on Boston was General Gage, and he wanted to seize Dorchester Heights because it would give them the advantage of higher ground. In November 1775, General Washington sent one of his generals, Henry Knox, to bring cannon back from Fort Ticonderoga, which was in New York, near the Vermont border; Knox and eighty teams of oxen trudged through the snow over two hundred miles to get to Ticonderoga and bring back 59 cannon to Boston, and when they reached Boston, they had to get the guns in place without tipping their hand to the British, so on March 4, 1776, they wrapped their wagon wheels with straw to deaden the sound and moved the cannon from Roxbury to Dorchester Heights. British General Howe had planned to attack the heights, but a storm prevented his soldiers from landing, and when the storm was over, they were totally surprised when they were ready to attack the heights and found American cannon staring right at them. This basically forced the British to leave Boston and left the city in American hands, so Dorchester played a pivotal role in America’s survival at the beginning of the war. The map also shows the important roads leading out of Boston: the road to Concord, the road to Chelsea, and the road to Dorchester, as well as different depths or soundings in Boston Harbor, The map is dated July 25, 1775, only one month and eight days after the Battle of Bunker Hill, and according to the Massachusetts Historical Society, the map was made in Boston and probably drawn by an officer (the officer is unnamed). (See the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society," Volume 17, pages 62 and 63.) The original map was acquired by a Mr. Deane, who procured it in England, which suggests the map was drawn by an English officer, but the Historical Society did not say how Mr. Deane acquired it. There are four maps like this one in Special Collections around the country (per WorldCat), but all of those maps are facsimiles or reproductions of the original map and measure 43 x 44 cm., and the facsimile sheets they are printed on measure 47 x 56 cm. (The facsimile maps are held at the University of Pennsylvania, the New York Public Library, Harvard, and the Boston Athenaeum; the Library of Congress is supposed to have one, according to WorldCat, but when we checked, the copy they supposedly had is not listed in their holdings anymore.) The map has a black border around the edges and a scale at the bottom, and it is under glass, with a cardboard backing, which was probably added later on to support the map. The frame measures 18 3/4 by 18 1/2 in. wide with a slight separation in the lower left part of the frame, and the map itself measures 17 3/4 by 17 5/8 in. wide and we don’t know if this one was published before the facsimile copies were made, but the facsimile one at the New York Public Library is larger than this one - it measures 43 by 44 cm. for the map and is printed on a sheet which measures 47 by 56 cm., per WorldCat, while the map here measures 45.5 cm. by 45 cm. wide and is not printed on a facsimile sheet, as far as we know. (A facsimile sheet would go far behind the dimensions of this map.) The map is in very good condition, with no holes or tears or visible repairs we can see, just faint browning around Phipps’s Farm, faint soiling and browning near the Roxbury Meeting house, faint soiling near Thompson’s Island, and the map appears to be very clean otherwise. #250 #7049
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