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This finely executed battle plan, engraved for Charles Stedman’s History of the American War and dated 10 February 1794, records the Battle of Hobkirk’s Hill, fought on 25 April 1781 just north of Camden, South Carolina. Drawn from a manuscript by Captain C. Vallancey of the Volunteers of Ireland, the map offers a rare and tactically detailed visual account of Nathanael Greene’s failed assault on the British garrison under Lord Rawdon during the Southern Campaign of the American Revolution.
The plate captures the terrain with notable clarity. Hobkirk’s Hill runs horizontally through the upper center of the composition, its crest lined with blocks denoting the American positions—Maryland Line, reserves, and Virginia Line—under Maj. Gen. Greene. Advancing from the lower right, British forces appear as blocks advancing uphill, with skirmish lines and forward pickets indicated by chevrons and a crossed swords marking the point of initial contact.
Though a tactical defeat for Greene, the action forced the British to abandon Camden soon after, and Vallancey’s plan stands as one of the clearest cartographic records of this turning point in the Southern Theater. The map is oriented with north to the top, marked by a large arrow, and features finely engraved topographical detail throughout, including wooded elevations, watercourses, and settlement structures.
William Faden (1749-1836) was the most prominent London mapmaker and publisher of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. His father, William Mackfaden, was a printer who dropped the first part of his last name due to the Jacobite rising of 1745.
Apprenticed to an engraver in the Clothworkers' Company, he was made free of the Company in August of 1771. He entered into a partnership with the family of Thomas Jeffreys, a prolific and well-respected mapmaker who had recently died in 1771. This partnership lasted until 1776.
Also in 1776, Faden joined the Society of Civil Engineers, which later changed its name to the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers. The Smeatonians operated as an elite, yet practical, dining club and his membership led Faden to several engineering publications, including canal plans and plans of other new engineering projects.
Faden's star rose during the American Revolution, when he produced popular maps and atlases focused on the American colonies and the battles that raged within them. In 1783, just as the war ended, Faden inherited his father's estate, allowing him to fully control his business and expand it; in the same year he gained the title "Geographer in Ordinary to his Majesty."
Faden also commanded a large stock of British county maps, which made him attractive as a partner to the Ordnance Survey; he published the first Ordnance map in 1801, a map of Kent. The Admiralty also admired his work and acquired some of his plates which were re-issued as official naval charts.
Faden was renowned for his ingenuity as well as his business acumen. In 1796 he was awarded a gold medal by the Society of Arts. With his brother-in-law, the astronomer and painter John Russell, he created the first extant lunar globe.
After retiring in 1823 the lucrative business passed to James Wyld, a former apprentice. He died in Shepperton in 1826, leaving a large estate.
![[Land grant document signed by Revolutionary War hero William Moultrie with plat map signed by surveyor general Peter Bremar and deputy surveyor David Reynolds] State of South-Carolina. To all to whom these presents shall come, greeting... by these Presents do grant unto the said Harmon Dees ... a Plantation or Tract of Land, containing Four Hundred Acres situate in the District of Camden on Polly Bridge Swamp waters of Black River](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/84439.jpg)
