Map of Texas compiled from Surveys recorded in the Law Office of Texas, and other Official Surveys

About this map:

Arrowsmith first published his famous map of the Republic of Texas on 16 November 1841, shortly after the Republic was officially recognized by Great Britain. It documents the developing towns and counties as well as the location of Indian tribes, roads, and natural features. Arrowsmith’s map of Texas “was probably the first to show the full extent of Texas’s claim to the region of the upper Rio Grande, an area included within Texas’s boundaries until the Compromise of 1850 … the map certainly was the best information on Texas geography available in Europe” (Martin & Martin Maps of Texas and the Southwest, 32; see also Streeter Bibliography of Texas, 1373).

The work:

This large folio engraving is from John Arrowsmith’s The London Atlas of Universal Geography, exhibiting the physical & political divisions of the various countries of the world, constructed from original materials. The work was published in London by J. Arrowsmith in 1843. This is one of the finest 19th-century English atlases, and of particular note was his map of Texas and Australia.

John Arrowsmith (1790-1873) was one of the greatest geographers of his era. He was a founding member of the Royal Geographical Society. He introduced the London Atlas in 1834 with subsequent editions dated 1840, 1842, and 1858 but as he continuously added new maps there’s no determined collation for each edition. He also continuously updated and corrected his maps which drew their information from documents supplied by `The Colonial Office, the Hydrographical Office of the Admiralty, the East India Company, the Royal Asiatic Society, the Royal Geographical Society’, and numerous other `Offices, Companies, and Societies’.