This is a rare three-part map relating to GEORGIA. The founder of the colony James Oglethorpe (1696-1785) was an active promoter of emigration to the rich lands he could offer. This activity extended to continental Europe and an offer was extended to a group known as the Salzburger community. In 1731 Archbishop Firmian of Salzburg, Austria expelled 20,000 Protestants from the region because of their beliefs. Many went to East Prussia but a number took up an offer organized through the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge in England to travel to Georgia and make a fresh start. The head of the group was one Reverend Samuel Urlsperger, the Pastor of St Anna’s Lutheran Church in Augsburg, Germany. The first party arrived in Savannah 12 March 1734. Oglethorpe led them to their new home at a site several miles inland called Ebenezer meaning ‘stone of help’. It was situated on Ebenezer Creek. Sickness, death and infertile soil took its toll and soon they requested a new site on the Savannah River and were eventually relocated to ‘New’ Ebenezer at the mouth of the creek on the Savannah River. It was laid out like Savannah before it and by 1741 numbered one thousand two hundred amongst its inhabitants.

The Urlspurger Community published their own tracts from 1735 and included with that of 1747 was this fine map by Carl Albrecht Seutter. Carl Albrecht Seutter (1722-62) was the son of Matthaus Seutter (1678-c.1757) and like his father also an engraver, globe maker and map publisher in Augsburg. It is a three-part map, half of which is taken by a plan of the town of New Ebenezer. As with many such towns the final construction was not quite the same. The other half of the sheet is largely taken up with a map of the coastal regions of the south east extending from Charleston to St. Augustine. It is derived from Richard Seale’s map of 1741 and includes the location of Ebenezer, the old town, not the new one. There is an inset of St. Simon’s Island and next to the map is a small diagram of three water wheels which might have powered the saw mill industry begun in 1735 or the first rice and grist mill in 1740.

The map was also sold separately by Seutter and may be found in his larger composite atlases, all of which are very rare. One of the most famous people to travel with the Salzburgers to Georgia was amongst a party of 160 in 1751. His name was John William Gerard von Brahm, a surveyor who would be one of the greatest mapmakers of the south east for the next 30 years. Cumming (1998) nos. 264 & 5; Deák (1988) no. 95; Phillips (1901) p. 271; Reps ‘Town Planning in Frontier America’ p. 247; Stokes (1933) 145, Views-7.