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The First Printed Map of the Route From Albany to Lake Ontario
This map illustrates the route from Albany and to Lake Ontario, a critical early communication for British troops during the French & Indian War. This is the earliest printed map to illustrate this route and is almost certainly drawn directly from detailed manuscript maps prepared by the British forces in New York during the early years of the War, between 1756 and 1759.
Details include the primary roads and rivers along the route, as well as a number of British Forts and small frontier settlements in New York, as well as several "Carrying Places," where travelers would be required to portage between rivers or around rapids and waterfalls. Based upon the names of the forts shown, the map likely reflects the state of affairs as of 1759, the year in which Fort Brewerton was constructed. Previously, Fort Stanwix had been built in August 1758.
As illustrated by the following two British manuscript maps from the collection of King George III, an effective route from Albany to Lake Ontario was of great strategic importance to the British, as a means of countering the more direct access which the French had to the interior parts of North America via the St. Lawrence River. Francis Pfister's A Map of the Province of New York and Part of New Jersey with a Part of New France, A Map of the Province of New York & Part of New England With a Part of New France, and Thomas Abercrombie's . . . Map of the Scene of Action . . . , frame the emphasis placed upon this route.
The present map is likely drawn in large part from the this untitled map of the route between Albany and Oswego, which was formerly in the collection of King George III and was drawn in about 1756.
The route from Albany to Lake Ontario was of critical importance to the British during the French and Indian War (1754–1763) because it provided a direct corridor for military movements, supplies, and communication between the British colonies and the strategic western frontier. This route served as a vital connection to the Great Lakes and the Ohio Valley, areas contested between the British and French. Control of Lake Ontario allowed the British to project power into the interior of North America and challenge the French stronghold at Fort Niagara and other key positions in the Great Lakes region.
The British established or strengthened several forts along this corridor—Fort Albany, Fort Herkimer, Fort Stanwix, Fort Oswego, and Fort Ontario—to protect the route and secure the Mohawk River Valley, a natural passageway through the rugged terrain. The Mohawk Valley and the road to Lake Ontario were frequent targets of French and Native American raids. Maintaining control of the route enabled the British to protect settlements in New York’s interior and prevent French advances toward Albany, the key supply and logistics hub for British operations.
The British used this route to launch major offensives against French forts in the Great Lakes region, particularly the 1759 campaign against Fort Niagara. Fort Oswego was the staging ground for the British Troops from the 44th, 46th and a portion of the 60th regiment and militias from Rhode Island and New York, who traveled by way of the Mohawk River in the late Spring of 1759, where the combined forces met with Sir William Johnson and 600 Iroquois warriors, before attacking Fort Niagara on July 6, 1759. Taking control of the western terminus of the route at Lake Ontario cut off French access to the interior and helped solidify British dominance in North America. The Mohawk Valley was home to the Iroquois Confederacy, who played a crucial role in the conflict. Control of the route allowed the British to maintain diplomatic relations with the Iroquois and reinforce alliances that were vital to their success against the French.
Thomas Mante
Thomas Mante’s History of the Late War in North America (1772) is a detailed account of the French and Indian War (1754–1763), focusing on military campaigns and geopolitical developments. Mante, a British army officer and historian, offers a firsthand perspective on key events and battles, including Braddock’s defeat, the capture of Louisbourg, and the pivotal Battle of Quebec. His narrative emphasizes British strategy and leadership while critiquing colonial and military mismanagement.
The book is notable for its inclusion of detailed maps illustrating the theaters of war, providing essential context for military operations. Mante’s work is one of the earliest comprehensive histories of the conflict, blending analysis with firsthand observation, and remains a valuable resource for understanding the complexities of the struggle for dominance in North America.
Rarity
Mante's History of the Late War in North America is rare on the market, and the maps almost never appear separately.
This is the first example of this map we have seen on the market.
Thomas Kitchin was a British cartographer and engraver. Born in Southwark, England, Kitchin was the eldest of several children. He was apprenticed to the map engraver Emanuel Bowen from 1732 to 1739, and he married Bowen’s daughter, Sarah, in December 1739. By 1741 Kitchin was working independently and in 1746 he began taking on apprentices at his firm. His son Thomas Bowen Kitchin was apprenticed to him starting in 1754. By 1755 Kitchin was established in Holborn Hill, where his firm produced all kinds of engraved materials, including portraits and caricatures. He married his second wife, Jane, in 1762. Beginning in 1773 Kitchin was referred to as Hydrographer to the King, a position his son also later held. He retired to St. Albans and continued making maps until the end of his life.
A prolific engraver known for his technical facility, clean lettering, and impressive etched decorations, Kitchin produced several important works throughout his career. He produced John Elphinstone’s map of Scotland in 1746, and the first pocket atlas of Scotland, Geographia Scotiae, in 1748/1749. He co-published The Small English Atlas in 1749 with another of Bowen’s apprentices, Thomas Jefferys. He produced The Large English Atlas serially with Emanuel Bowen from 1749 to 1760. The latter was the most important county atlas since the Elizabethan era, and the first real attempt to cover the whole country at a large scale. In 1755 Kitchin engraved the important John Mitchell map of North America, which was used at the peace treaties of Paris and Versailles. In 1770 he produced the twelve-sheet road map England and Wales and in 1769–70 he produced Bernhard Ratzer’s plans of New York. In 1783, he published The Traveller’s Guide through England and Wales.
Thomas Mante (bapt. 1733, d. c. 1802), army officer, historian, and sometime intelligence agent, was baptized Thomas Mant on 3 December 1733 at St Faith’s, Havant, Hampshire. He was the eldest of eight children born to Thomas Mant, an estate manager, and Mary Bingham, daughter of the church historian Joseph Bingham and his wife Dorothea Pococke. Nothing is known of his early education or training, but he began his military career on 25 June 1756 as a senior second lieutenant in the Royal Marines.
During the Seven Years’ War, Mante transferred to the 56th company of Marines in 1759 and participated in the major West Indies campaigns of 1759 and 1762. He served as one of seventeen assistant engineers under the Earl of Albemarle during the siege of Havana in 1762, and by June of that year had obtained a commission as a lieutenant in the 77th Regiment of Foot. That regiment departed Havana for New York in August 1762, but was disbanded the following year as part of postwar reductions. Mante, however, remained in North America: in 1763 he joined Colonel Henry Bouquet’s campaign against the forces of Pontiac, and in 1764 served as brigade major in Colonel John Bradstreet’s expedition to the western Great Lakes.
Placed on half-pay in 1765, Mante spent the next eight years in London. He sought appointments—most ambitiously, as lieutenant-governor of a proposed colony in Detroit—but failed to secure political support. He relied increasingly on borrowed funds and fell out with both John Bradstreet and Sir Charles Gould. During this period, he was employed by John Robinson at the Treasury to provide intelligence in anticipation of a renewed Anglo-French conflict. On 29 June 1769 he married Mary Silver at North Hayling, near his family’s home in Havant.
Mante’s literary career began in this first London period. Between 1770 and 1772 he completed four military works: three translations of treatises on tactics from the French school of Joly de Maizeroy—A Treatise on the Use of Defensive Arms (1770), Elementary Principles of Tactics (1771), and the two-volume System of Tactics (1781)—and his major historical achievement, The History of the Late War in North America (1772). This last work, issued with a suite of folding maps, drew on his own military experience and is still regarded as a valuable contemporary account of the Seven Years’ War. He changed the spelling of his name from “Mant” to “Mante” between 1770 and 1772, and used it consistently thereafter.
In 1773, Mante moved permanently to Dieppe, Normandy, where he had lived intermittently since 1769. He had been recruited by the Jacobite exile Jean-Charles-Adolphe Grant de Blairfindy to provide military intelligence to the French ministry of war. Though on the French payroll for a time, his payments ceased in 1774 amid suspicions that he was a double agent. Nonetheless, he remained in France, serving briefly as an excise officer and then attempting to operate an estate for raising British sheep. This project failed, and in 1778 he was imprisoned for debt. That same year, he published Traité des prairies artificielles, des enclos, et de l’éducation des moutons de race angloise, a treatise on English methods of sheep husbandry, which received formal approval from Louis XVI and was dedicated to Benjamin Franklin, then serving as American ambassador in Paris.
Released from prison in early 1781, Mante returned to London in poor health and near destitution. Rejected by his former associates, he found support from the publisher Thomas Hookham, who issued two of his novels, Lucinda and The Siege of Aubigny, in 1781–82. These were paraphrases of French originals. His final project was an ambitious Naval and Military History of the Wars of England, published in multiple volumes between c.1795 and 1807. He personally authored the early volumes and most of volumes five and six, which covered the wars of 1714–1771. Volume seven was only partially completed by him and finished by another hand; volume eight was written posthumously by an anonymous editor. Between 1800 and 1801 he also contributed nineteen essays, titled “Retrospect of the eighteenth century,” to The Gentleman’s Magazine. He died around 1802, still at work on his history.
Substantially based on the ODNB entry.
