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1813 Map of the Southern Section Melish.jpg (631417 bytes)      1824 Southern Section of the United States including Florida etc by John Melish 1816 Klinckstroem.jpg (781983 bytes)

Above left: A Map of the Southern Section of the United States including the Floridas and Bahama Islands, Shewing the Seat of War in that Department, 1813 by John Melish.

Above right: Southern Section of the United States including Florida &c. by John Melish 1816 [1824] (image courtesy of Old World Auctions)

Click the following links for other digitized examples of the 1813 map and the 1824 map (or here).

The map above left appeared in Melish's Military & Topographical Atlas of the United States , first published in 1813 with 8 maps.  Examples of different states found via Google include:

Louisiana State Museum Map Database includes an 1815 dated copy of the Military Atlas with the Southern Section map reportedly dated 1814 (image not available) and with map title the same as in 1813.

There are at least 2 different states with the imprint below the neat line stating "Improved to 11th June 1816." On each, the title has been changed to remove reference to the "Seat of War" and an inset showing Bermuda is included adjacent to the right border.  The University of Illinois has a copy that shows a "double-wide" Mississippi Territory, while the David Rumsey Collection contains a copy which shows Alabama Territory (established March 3, 1817), suggesting a publication date for the latter of no earlier than 1817. Rumsey's copy is in a Military Atlas which has an 1815 [out]dated title page.

There are refernces to this map being included in an 1819 Melish publication, but no images could be located on line, so at this time it is uncertain if there were later updates to the plate.

Finally, the map shown above right is not from the original Melish plate, but is a very slightly smaller map presumably engraved by C. F. Himberg (his imprint is on the Northern Section map, but not the above map). This map is found in the atlas to accompany Axel Klinckowström's Bref om de Forenta Staterna, published in 1824 in Stockholm . "A Swedish aristocrat, Klinckowström spent three years in the United States (1818-1820) as an official emissary of his country, traveling widely and taking a lively interest in all he saw" (NYPL/Deak). This map is curious in its mixture of English and Swedish text. For example, "The alligators go no further north" just above Louisiana's border, as well as a few other annotations from the original Melish map, are engraved in Swedish on this map. Yet other annotations, such as "Great Beds of Marble" in Missouri Territory are retained in English.     

John Melish (1771-1822) was born in Scotland and traveled extensively to the West Indies and the United States during his early career in the textile industry. He kept detailed journals about his travels and, upon moving permanently to America in ~1811, he embarked on a publishing career. Melish was the first purely cartographic/geographic American publisher. Despite a relatively short publishing career,  which ended with his sudden death in 1822, John Melish is credited with bringing the American cartographic enterprise up to world standards, as is evident by the quality of his work.

 Additional Reference: Ristow, American Maps and Mapmakers, pages 180-183.  

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