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Extremely rare road map, showing a section of the road from Newborough (Newburgh) New York to Albany New York, from Christopher Colles's unfinished American Road Atlas, A Survey of the Roads of the United States of America. This section includes Kingston, New ork, Tenbrook, Ostrander's, Van Vliet, and Roundout Kill.
Irish-born engineer and surveyor, Christopher Colles produced what is considered the first road map or guide book of the U.S. It uses a format familiar to travelers of the era, with each plate consisting of two to three strip maps arranged side by side, covering approximately 12 miles. Colles began this work in 1789, but brought the project to an end in 1792 after obtaining relatively few subscriptions. But in that time, he compiled an atlas covering approximately 1,000 miles from Albany to Williamsburg, and is invaluable today for understanding the developing road network in the new nation.
Christopher James Colles (1739-1816) was an Irish-born surveyor, mapmaker, engineer, and publisher. Whose career spanned the American Revolution into the early Federal period in the United States. In Lloyd Griffin's work on Colles' two major cartographic projects he says of the man: "Christopher Colles was not primarily a map maker; nor, for that matter, did he specialize in any one circumscribed field. A listing of his endeavors proves him one of the most universal jacks-of-all-trades in the whole realm of science in America." (page 171) Griffin goes on to say: "The mere enumeration of Colles' noncartographic activities astounds one. He manufactured bandboxes, paper hangings, rat and mouse traps, Prussian blue and other colors, and fireworks; practiced and taught surveying5 tutored in hydraulics; lectured on any and all scientific subjects; made astronomical calculations for almanacs; tested the specific gravity of imported liquors for the Government; collected, arranged, and sold furs, Indian vases, and tomahawks obtained during his travels in Mohawk country; and constructed what is said to be the first semaphoric telegraph in America and the first steam engine—though the latter was not a success." (page 172)
Colles is known today primarily for his Survey of the Roads of the United States (1789), which was the first American road book. He is also responsible for a much more ambitious, though incomplete, project The Geographical Ledger and Systemized Atlas (1794).
His daughter, Eliza Colles (1776-1799), was "America's first female map engraver" (Ristow), whose signed output consists exclusively of two maps from the Systemized Atlas and one plate in the Introduction to that work. She died aged 23, presumably in the yellow fever outbreak of 1799.