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Tried lining up a 1747 Bowen map with a modern survey in Vermont and the scale was way off
So I picked up a cheap reproduction of Emanuel Bowen's map of the New England colonies at a flea market in Burlington last month, mostly because I liked the little sea monster drawing. I got the idea to lay it over a current topo printout of my county to see how the towns lined up, and man, it was a mess. The Connecticut River on his map sits a good 8 miles east of where it actually runs, and two towns that should be about 12 miles apart are nearly touching on the old one. Turns out a lot of these 1700s maps were drawn from traveler reports and guesswork, not real surveys, so the longitude is basically made up in spots. I had to keep reminding myself the shape of the land was more of a rough idea back then. Now I'm wondering if there's a decent way to date these reproductions or find out which survey a map like that was based on, since the flea market guy had no clue. Has anyone here worked out a scale for an old map like this without losing their mind?
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charlie2698d ago
Bowen maps are mostly decoration, not survey data. For scale, pick two points that still exist today and just do the math. Dating a repro is easier from the paper and print quality than the map itself.
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