[MAPS & ATLASES]. FRY, Joshua (1699-1754) and Peter JEFFERSON (1708-1757). A Map of the Most Inhabited Part of Virginia containing the whole Province of Maryland with Part of Pensilvania, New Jersey, and North Carolina. London: Robert Sayer and Thomas Jefferys, 1775.

Engraved map of Virginia and Maryland on 4 sheets joined as two horizontal sheets, borders and waterways hand-colored in outline (a few soft vertical creases, some light browning and spotting, tiny hole in blank area of North Carolina with old repair verso). Each overall sheet 1303 x 492 mm. Framed. Cartouche by Charles Grignion after Francis Hayman depicting a wharf scene.

THE FIRST PRINTED MAP OF VIRGINIA BY VIRGINIANS, state 6 with the date changed from 1751 to 1775. Peter Jefferson (father of Thomas Jefferson) and Joshua Fry first prepared the map at the request of Lord Halifax in 1751, who had recently become the president of the board of Trade and Plantations. It was first revised in 1751, and revised again in 1755 to include information about western Virginia colony based on John Dalrymple and Christopher Gist's journals. In his autobiography, Thomas Jefferson describes his father's collaboration with Joshua Fry produced the "first map of Virginia which has ever been made, that of Captain Smith being merely a conjectural sketch." The map is the first to accurately depict the Blue Ridge Mountains and to delineate the road system in Virginia. Pritchard & Taliaferro, Degrees of Latitude, no. 30; Schwartz & Ehrenberg, Mapping of America, pp. 157–158; Stevens & Tree 87f.


Property from the Collection of Richard D. Simmons, Alexandria, VA