This extremely rare English edition was published barely six weeks after the virtually impossible to obtain American printing by Samuel Blodget. It illustrates the Battle fought near Lake George on 8 September 1755. Major General Edward Braddock oversaw the British forces in North America and earlier in the year he had designed a three pronged attack against the French. One against the French at Fort Duquesne, one against Fort Niagara and the third on Crown Point on Lake Champlain. An Indian Trader named Sir William Johnson was put in charge of the latter.

Along the side of the map is a previously unnoticed map of the Hudson River from New York to Lake George, the scene of the battle. It includes detailed layouts of Fort William Henry and Fort Edward lower left. The latter is given its new name having been originally called Fort Edward Lyman. It holds a strategically important position on the Hudson River beyond which it is not navigable. It also controlled access to the Champlain River valley and Lake George which was accessible by Portage. The Indians called this area ‘The Great Carrying Place’ and from an early period this region was destined to be occupied. In 1709 Fort Nicholson was erected here during Queen Anne’s War. The region was critical to the great warpath’s to and from New York and Canada during the various conflicts of the eighteenth century.

Advancing up the Hudson River ,Johnson was unaware that the French had learnt of his plans. By August he had reached the southern shore of Lac Saint Sacrement, which he renamed Lake George to honour the King. He ordered the construction of Fort William Henry to protect the region. The French force marched south from Crown Point and ambushed the British. Blodget described how the French “became invisible to our men, by squatting below the under-growth of shrubs and brakes, or by concealing themselves behind the trees”. The scene is depicted on the left hand side of the plate. The British suffered heavy losses including their commander Colonel Ephraim Williams (after whom the College is named) and the Mohawk sachem Tiyanoga (known as Hendrick by the English). Johnson himself suffered a leg wound. The French advanced to Lake George the same day and met a counter attack from the American colonials who decided to fight the ‘Indian’ way. The French fought the European method of three neat lines of firing troops. Blodget viewed the conflict from a position near the English cannon. The French suffered over 260 killed and wounded and their commander Chief Marshall Ludwig August Dieskau was captured. They retreated in disarray to Crown Point. This was a notable engagement as it was the first occasion in which American colonials defeated a regular army without assistance from the British forces. The scene of this battle is depicted on the right side of the plate. It is also a notable battle in that it halted the French advance into New York for the duration of the War.

Samuel Blodget (1724-1807) was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, 1 April 1724. Blodget was at Louisburg, 1745 at the start of the French and Indian War. His account records that he was present at Lake George in the Camp and “though I could not be in the front, and rear, and on either wing at the same time, yet being an independent person not belonging to the Army. I had, it may be, as good an opportunity as any person whatever, to observe the whole management on both sides”. This confirms his role as a sutler selling food and supplies to the army. Blodget was quite an entrepreneur and became ‘a merchant, manufacturer, and canal builder, and also a visionary, having developed machinery for raising sunken ships’ (ADNB). Using a machine that he invented in 1783 he raised the valuable cargo from a ship sunk off Plymouth. Blodget took his ideas to Spain and failed to get any interest and in Britain he proposed raising the ‘Royal George’ unsuccessfully. In 1793 he moved to New Hampshire and became a judge of the court of common pleas in Hillsborough, New Hampshire. He also began construction of a canal around the Amoskeag Falls on the Merrimack but the financial strain left it unfinished. He spent time in prison for debt, the canal being eventually completed, it now bears his name. He died at Haverhill 1 September 1807. His son (Samuel Jr.) was in banking and insurance and was involved in the construction of the new capital in the District of Columbia.

Blodget returned to Boston in late October or early November 1755 after the conflict with the sketches he had made. These he had engraved by Thomas Johnston (1708-67) and his explanatory notes written by Richard Draper. Blodget announced in the ‘Boston Gazette’ on 22 December that the plan displayed ‘to the eye a very lively as well as just representation’ of both engagements. It was the first American engraving to depict an American battle plan, indeed it is the first to depict any American historical scene. The significance of the engraving was immediately recognized and by the 2 February 1756, in little over a month, the London publisher Thomas Jefferys had engraved and published an English edition. He claimed that his plan was “the only piece that exhibits the American method of Bush Fighting”.

An area of the map which has received little recognition is the depiction of the Hudson River. The first map of the River appeared on Johannes van Keulen’s Pas-Kaart. Vande Zee Kusten van NIEW NEDERLAND published in Amsterdam, 1684. We have been unable to identify any other earlier printed map devoted to it. The Jeffery’s version is rotated to rest along the left side instead of the top of the map, in its place runs the title. The Jeffery’s makes some improvements in spelling over the American printing such as ‘Coll Mooers folly’ becomes ‘Col Moores Folly’, ‘Soratoga’ becomes ‘Saratoga’ but interestingly ‘Mr Rancelors House’ becomes ‘Mr Seylers House’ reflecting a new owner possibly or incorrect transcription from a manuscript version which Jeffery’s also got to work from?

The American printing is of tremendous rarity last appearing on the market in the early 1980s. The Jeffery’s edition is not much more available only twice appearing on the market in the last 40 years and these were both the same example, the Middendorf copy. First acquired at Parke-Bernet, New York 18 May 1973 lot 14, it last appeared at the Guthman sale Sotheby’s New York 1 December 2005 lot 190 at which it brought $66,000. Provenance: Kenneth Nebenzahl c.1970; Dorothy and Marshall M. Reisman. American Dictionary of National Biography; ‘American Printmaking The First 150 Years’, plts. 22 & 23; Deák ‘Picturing America’ no. 105; Hitchings, Sinclair, in ‘Boston Prints & Printmakers’ pp. 83-131; Pritchard & Taliaferro ‘Degrees of Latitude’ pp. 164-7 (American issue); Schwartz ‘The French and Indian War 1754-63’ pp. 56-66; Schwartz & Ehrenberg p. 163, pl. 100; Shadwell 23; Stokes & Haskell 1755 C13; Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, 5:586, n.4.