This manuscript was made for the Depot des Plans de la Marine in Paris, as indicated in the title. The Depot were the official government body that produced maps and charts for the government of the day. The title also states that the map is drawn from an English work published recently. An examination reveals that this refers to the first state of the Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson map issued in London c.1753. This map is of great importance and the first state is of great rarity surviving in only four known examples:-

1. Tracy W. McGregor Collection, Alderman Library, Virginia University
2. Bancroft Collection, NYPL
3. Alnwick, Duke of Northumberland, UK
4. Sotheby’s, London, 10 May 2001 lot 123

The first state is particularly significant because the cartography in the northwest quadrant was updated in early 1755 in a second state. A comparison with this area shows that the manuscript was clearly drawn from the first state.

Word of the maps importance clearly spread and it would have been of vital importance that the French government possess a copy. The territory in this northwestern region was hotly contested and all possible knowledge would have been greatly valued. A copy of the map was soon acquired and this survives today. The example sold at Sotheby’s, London, in 2001 was from the Depot de la Marine archives and bore on the reverse the manuscript inscription ‘pour Mr. Bellin Ingenieur de la Marine’. Here we offer quite probably the fruit of that acquisition! The original Fry-Jefferson manuscript does not survive. If one excludes the reduced copy published by Robert de Vaugondy entitled Carte de la Virginie et du Maryland in Paris 1755, this is one of only five examples of the original version surviving, and the only one in manuscript.

An analysis of the handwriting on the map shows clearly more than one source which was commonplace at the time in such a workshop. Tempting as it might be to think that the great Nicolas Bellin worked on some part of it, we have yet to be able to confirm that. He was at the time the Censeur for the Depot in control of its production. No cartographic work has been located yet which can be clearly shown to be his work. A study of examples of his handwriting might be more revealing. The map closely follows the original although the depiction of the Delaware peninsula does differ. In the western portions a note explains that some of the information is not included. It cites several small ‘creeks’ which ‘would cause too much confusion’. It goes on to state that many dwellings are indicated but that several are omitted as ‘they are subject to change and of little interest’. One area of the map that differs is that the longitudes are converted to read from Paris rather than Philadelphia on the printed version. The title cartouche is conveniently placed over the area of Lake Erie as depicted on the Fry-Jefferson. Interestingly the earliest printed map of Virginia by Bellin we can trace is that which was published in La Petit Atlas Maritime, 1764.

‘Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1703-1772) entered the Dépôt des cartes, plans, et journaux de la Marine in 1721. The Depot had only been established in 1720; he was eighteen years old, and we have no sources that tell us anything about his background, prior education, or training, or even exactly what his “job description” was in the Depot. Another unclear aspect of these early years is his relationship with Philippe Buache, who also worked in the Depot after the death of his father-in-law, Guillaume Delisle, in 1726. Buache didn’t really work out well in the Depot and left in 1737 or 1738, probably to Bellin’s relief. Bellin gets a brevet from the king appointing him officially as “ingénieur-hydrographe de la Marine” in 1741. By this time he has been compiling maps and charts from existing sources and basically operating as a “hydrographe de cabinet” though a trip to Dunkirk to do some on site surveying is recorded in the 1730s.

Though he worked all his life in the Depot, he did do some “free-lancing.” In the 1740s he also worked for authors such as le Père de Charlevoix and the Abbé Prévost designing maps for their work (Histoire et description générale de la Nouvelle France for the former, Histoire Générale des Voyages for the latter). In 1745 he is appointed Censeur royal for works in geography, navigation, and voyages. He wrote over a hundred articles for the Encyclopedie, most of them in the first 7 volumes (1751-1757), and he designed many of the illustrative plates for volume VII of the plates, concerning the Marine. During his years in the Depot his big achievements were re-working all the maps from the old Neptune François, and adding new charts, all published in the Hydrographie Françoise (most maps in these two volumes dated 1737-1772). He also produced the Petit Atlas Maritime in 5 volumes (1764), at the behest of the Duc de Choiseul, and the Atlas de l’Isle de Corse (1769). He died in March of 1772, left a widow, a daughter, and a lot of debts. We don’t have a thorough list of all the maps he produced, though Bellin himself produced a number of lists of his own works, which are in the archives of the Marine, now in the Archives Nationales.’ (Private correspondence with Mary Pedley). Pritchard & Taliaferro (2002) ‘Degrees of Latitude’ no. 30 pp. 154-9; Sotheby’s, London, 10 May 2001 lot 123.