Popple, Henry:

$250,000 · Offered by William Reese Company

A MAP OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN AMERICA WITH THE FRENCH AND SPANISH SETTLEMENTS ADJACENT THERETO. The Thomas W. Streeter copy of the first large-scale map of North America, and the first printed map to show the thirteen colonies, in original boards, complete with the separate key map and the contents leaf.Henry Popple produced this map under the auspices of the Lord Commissioners of Trade and Plantations to help settle disputes arising from the rival expansion of English, Spanish, and French colonies. "France claimed not only Canada, but also territories drained by the Mississippi and its tributaries - in practical terms, an area of half a continent" - Goss, p.122. The present copy of Popple's map would have been particularly useful in these early disputes.Benjamin Franklin, on May 22, 1746, ordered two copies of this map, "one bound the other in sheets," for the Pennsylvania Assembly. It was the only map of sufficient size and grandeur available - and the map is on a grand scale: if actually assembled it would result in a rectangle over eight feet square. Its coverage extends from the Grand Banks off Newfoundland to about ten degrees west of Lake Superior, and from the Great Lakes to the north coast of South America. Several of the sections are illustrated with handsome pictorial insets, including views of New York City, Niagara Falls, Mexico City, and Quebec, and inset maps of Boston, Charles-Town, Providence, Bermuda, and a number of others."Little is known of Henry Popple

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