Antique Map of Georgia, 1859

The story of this map

James R. Butts had served as Georgia’s Surveyor-General, and this map of 1859 is the work of a man who knew the state’s land records inside out. Printed by R. L. Barnes, it is a proper wall map, more than five feet tall in the original, drawn at roughly seven miles to the inch and intended for courthouses and offices rather than atlases.

That scale is its charm. Every county is picked out in colour, every river and creek has a name, and the towns are placed with a surveyor’s precision, from the tidewater around Savannah to the mountains of the north. It records Georgia in the last quiet years before the Civil War, and the Boston Public Library’s scan is enormous, so even a modest print shows crisp lettering.

For a Georgia home, a law office in Atlanta, a farmhouse in the Piedmont or anyone tracing family through the state, it is a handsome and very personal piece. Because the sheet is nearly square, it also suits our square frame sizes. It belongs to our Antique Maps of US States collection, alongside Colton’s Florida of 1883.

Printed to order on archival matte paper, or on canvas, and framed in the country of delivery.

Before and after

Left: the archive scan exactly as published. Right: the file that goes to the printer.

Archive scanRestored

Restoration notes

Restoration plan: crop scan margins, balance colour cast and levels while keeping the paper tone, remove library stamps and scanner artefacts if present, gentle sharpening. No repainting of original content.

Every print carries its archive credit on the packing slip. Paper tone and small imperfections of the original are kept on purpose; nothing is redrawn.