The First French Map of the United States

In this segment of Collections Corner, the Institute’s research services librarian, Rachel Nellis, highlights a rare map from our Robert Charles Lawrence Fergusson Collection, Carte des Etats-Unis de l’Amerique suivant le Traité de Paix de 1783, engraved by Jean Lattré, an official engraver to Louis XVI. This map is an exceedingly rare copy of the first state of the first issue engraved by Lattré in 1784 and holds special significance to the Institute. Not only did Lattré include a fine rendering of the Eagle insignia of the Society of the Cincinnati among the symbols in its cartouche, but it is one of only four copies known to include side panels of text, printed from separate plates and pasted to the left and right edges of the central sheet, that give a full chronology of the war.