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Description

The Only Printed Map To Name "The Mormon State of Deseret."

Fine example of one of Traugott Bromme's travel maps of the United States, with an inset map naming the " Mormonen-Stat Deseret".

Loosely modeled after the maps of Smith, Mitchell and Tanner, the map provides a meticulous description of the United States, with emphasis on Post Roads, Railroads and Canals, and noting the distances between major cities along these major transportation routes.

A note in Texas, just below the Washita River, shows "Grant der Texas Emigration und Land Company 1843, as well as the Mercer Grant of 1844, two of the later land grant colonies in Texas.

The map extends west to cover most of Texas, Indian or Western Territory, an early reference to Nebraska and a massive Minnesota Territory, with a large inset of the area around St. Louis in the upper left corner. A number of the insets focus on the areas around urban centers, such as New York, Baltimore-Washington, Philadelphia and Boston.

The Mormon State of Deseret

By far the most unusual feature of the map is the large inset map, identifying " Oregon, California unde der Mormonen-Stat Deseret ." To our knowledge this is the only printed map to include the title "Deseret" and to specifically call it a "Mormon State" in the title.

Of note are the appearance within the Mormon State of Deseret (Utah NOT named), the towns of Salt Lake City, Utahville, Brownsville and Browns Hole.

The provisional State of Deseret was founded in 1849 by Latter-Day Saint settlers in the Salt Lake city area. Brigham Young sent John Milton Bernhisel to Washington, D.C., to petition for territorial status, but later, in March 1849, elected to change the petition to a request for Statehood. The proposed state covered most of the lands from the Rocky Mountains and Oregon Territory to Mexico, extending west to the Sierra Nevadas and south to the Santa Monica Mountains, including Los Angeles and San Diego. While the provisional government met for several years, Utah Territory was formally created in 1851.

The present map is one of only three maps of which we are aware to include the name Deseret in 1850 (the other two being the 1850 Tanner map of Mexico and a German map by Joseph Meyer).

Brownsville is one of the early names for Ogden City, Utah. The name is a reference to the area on the trail to Salt Lake first called Browns Fort in 1847. Edward Tullidge, early Utah historian, notes "Miles Goodyear claimed a tract of land, which was a Mexican Grant to him made in 1841 [1840], commencing at the mouth of Weber Canyon and following the base of the mountain north to the Utah Hot Springs; thence west to the Salt Lake and thence along the shore of the Lake to a point opposite the Weber Canyon and thence east to the place of beginning. Captain James Brown purchased the 225 square mile tract in 1847, after returning from San Francisco. He kept only three hundred acres, for himself and his families. Captain James Brown opened the remainder to anyone who would come settle in the area.

After the purchase of Goodyear's fort, Brown was appointed bishop over the ward area designated as Brown's Settlement Ward or the Weber River Ward in 1849, by Brigham Young and the ruling council in Salt Lake. He was also elected to be the civil leader of the Weber River Precinct. Early in 1850, the Brown family abandoned the old Fort Buenaventura of Miles Goodyear and relocated on higher ground near present 29th Street and west of Wall Avenue, because of flooding of the Buenaventura settlement by the Weber River. Captain Brown moved his families northeast of the established fort to the area shown above as Brown's Settlement, which by 1851 would become Ogden City. The name was changed to Ogden when the City was incorporated on February 6th,1851, in honor of brigade leader of the Hudson Bay Company, Peter Skene Ogden, who had been in the region a decade earlier.

In his essay on the Mapping of Utah, Moffett notes that the first reference to Brownsville on a printed map is the 1850 Thomas Cowperthwait & Co. New Map of the State of California, Territories of Oregon, Washington, Utah & New Mexico.

Brown's Hole is now Browns Park, which was apparently named for a French-Canadian trapper and early settler, Baptiste Brown (though there are other candidates, historians have noted), Green and Colorado river explorer John Wesley Powell liked the word "park" a little better in his writings, and it seems to have stuck.

The State of Santa Fe

The appearance of Santa Fe, clearly differentiating Santa Fe from the Territories to the west and Texas to the east, is suggestive of the period in about 1850 when the Republicans attempted to organize an "anti-slavery" state, drafted a constitution and held a constitutional convention. At the time, the area extending to the Rio Grande was claimed by Texas. The initial 1850 state conception of New Mexico would look relatively similar to the Santa Fe configuration on the present map.

Traugott Bromme

Traugott Bromme was one of the most prolific German Travel writers from the 1830s to 1850s. His guides to German Emigrants, issued in many forms and abridgements, are now highly coveted. In a few of these guides, Bromme offered deluxe editions of the Guide, with a map published by JE Woerl.

Condition Description
Folding map with original case and 21 page travel guide.
Traugott Bromme Biography

Traugott Bromme was a traveler and publisher best known for this immigration guides for German migrants. Born in Anger, in Saxony, Traugott was orphaned at a young age. He emigrated to the United States at age eighteen. There he studied medicine, traveled extensively, and supposedly served as a surgeon in the nascent Colombian Navy and was imprisoned in Haiti. He returned to Germany in 1824, where he became a partner in his brother-in-law’s bookshop in Dresden. He began to publish books on the topic of immigration at this time.

In 1833 Bromme returned to the United States, this time to Baltimore where he took up a partnership in a publishing house, Scheld and Company. Here he began to publish his guidebooks targeting German immigration to America, which included maps after those of Henry Schenck Tanner. By 1840, he had again returned to Germany, starting a bookshop in Stuttgart. In 1846 he once again sailed to America, spending three years there. By 1849, he was back in Germany and seemingly returned to publishing. All of his outputs were geographic in nature and include several wall maps.