First Map to Focus on Georgia – Map of Georgia, Savannah, and the Ebenezar Settlement

This exceptional folio map is from Georg Matthaeus Seutter entitled Plan von Neu Ebenezer with a map of Georgia and Ebenezar. It was published in Augsburg in 1747 by Seutter. It was engraved by Tobias Conrad Lotter.

There are three copper engravings to one sheet. It features the first large-scale map focused specifically on Georgia. The map of Georgia includes St. Augustine, Florida up to Charleston, Sough Carolina. It features a grid outline of the city of Savannah. It also has a plan of one of the more interesting early American South settlements, Ebenezar. It was settled by the Salzburgers, a group of Lutherans that fled Catholic persecution in Austria. The English Society for Promoting Christian knowledge sponsored their emigration to Georgia in 1734 where they eventually settled Ebenezar on the Savannah River. The plan for Ebenezar was done by James Oglethorpe and modeled after Savannah. There is also a third diagram with a view of the town’s mill. The map was specifically developed to encourage prospective German immigrants to move to Georgia. This is the most desirable issue of the map as it is the three important Georgia maps to one sheet.

Matthäus Seutter was one of the most important German mapmakers of the eighteenth century. Born in Augsburg in 1678, he became an apprentice to the renowned cartographer Johann Baptiste Homann in Nuremberg. In 1707 he established himself as a map publisher in Augsburg, and quickly became Homann’s main rival. His business flourished and by 1731 he was appointed Geographer to the Imperial Court.