Beschreibung:

To the Honourable House of Representatives of the Freemen of Pennsylvania this Map of the City and Liberties of Philadelphia With the Catalogue of Purchasers is Humbly Dedicated.
Philadelphia: [Thomas Man], 1774. 6-sheet engraved map joined as three, engraved onto three copperplates by James Smither (775 x 505 mm each, approximately 775 x 1515 mm overall). Inset plan of Philadelphia after Thomas Holme, engraved views of the Alms House, Pennsylvania Hospital, and the State House. Housed in a cloth case. Condition : each sheet tissue backed repairing tears and losses principally in the margins, some loss to text at the upper right corner of the easternmost sheet. [With:] John REED. An Explanation of the Map of the City and Liberties of Philadelphia . Philadelphia: “Printed for the Author, and Sold by Mr. Nicholas Brooks,” 1774. Small folio (235 x 180 mm). Contemporary paper wrappers, lacks rear wrapper. Housed in a cloth chemise and morocco-backed slipcase. Condition : some losses to corners; front wrapper chipped, spine perished. among the rarest and most impressive maps of philadelphia, complete with a copy of its explanatory text. “John Reed was a promising younger merchant in Philadelphia before the Revolution. He was also convinced that he and his family had been unjustly deprived by William Penn of lands rightfully theirs lying outside the city. That conviction carried him to the publication of a small book and a new and different kind of Philadelphia map” (Snyder). The lands in question were the so called Liberty Lands, free tracts of land given to first settlers by William Penn. Reed’s map records the holdings and plots the locations of each of William Penn’s first purchasers, including that region north of the city. "The layout of the lots within the liberty lands was first mapped in 1774 by John Reed … Reed's map essentially serves as a warrantee tract map of the liberties and the book recites in detail the courses and distances of all the surveys within the liberties and the Original Purchaser's name under which each liberty lot was claimed" (Munger, Pennsylvania Land Records). This copy of the map is in its second state, with the printer’s name removed from the plate. The map, in either state, is incredibly rare. We have been unable to locate another copy appearing at auction in a review of the auction records for the past one hundred years. “Almost a century later than those by Holme, [Reed’s map] pictures the Philadelphia of the Declaration of Independence and of the Revolution. More widely used than any other early map, it shows the degree to which the Founder's plans had prevailed, or been modified in the Philadelphia known to Washington, Franklin and Jefferson, and as it appeared during the decade when it was not only the capital of the nation, but second only to London among English-speaking communities” (Lingelbach, “William Penn and City Planning” in PMHB vol. 68, no. 4). Evans 13564; Howes R128; Sabin 68554; Snyder, COI 41a; Wheat & Brun 458.