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Description

Herman Moll's map of Florida and French Louisiana.

Nice example of Moll's marvelous map of the region from Florida and the Carolinas in the east to Texas, extending as far north as the Missouri River.

The map is rich with early content, including many roads and Indian Villages in Texas, many early French forts along the Mississippi Valley, and other traits common to Moll's maps, including the odd projection of Florida. The early roads shown throughout the map are a unique feature, which Moll also used in his large format maps, including the Beaver Map, Codfish Map and Susquehanna Map.

The map is also rich with interesting annotations, including notes on La Salle's time in Texas in 1689, the Cenis Mission activities in 1716, a settlement near Natchitoches in 1727, three overland exploration routes through Texas in 1713 and 1716, the limits of King Charles II's Grant to the Lord Proprietor's (Carolina) in 1663, notes on the construction of several Spanish Forts on the Gulf Coast just prior to the publication of the map and a host of other excellent details.

An underappreciated early gem, reflecting much of the contemporary explorations and discoveries in Texas and along the Gulf Coast and Florida.

Condition Description
Original hand-color in outline.
Herman Moll Biography

Herman Moll (c. 1654-1732) was one of the most important London mapmakers in the first half of the eighteenth century.  Moll was probably born in Bremen, Germany, around 1654. He moved to London to escape the Scanian Wars. His earliest work was as an engraver for Moses Pitt on the production of the English Atlas, a failed work which landed Pitt in debtor's prison. Moll also engraved for Sir Jonas Moore, Grenville Collins, John Adair, and the Seller & Price firm. He published his first original maps in the early 1680s and had set up his own shop by the 1690s. 

Moll's work quickly helped him become a member of a group which congregated at Jonathan's Coffee House at Number 20 Exchange Alley, Cornhill, where speculators met to trade stock. Moll's circle included the scientist Robert Hooke, the archaeologist William Stuckley, the authors Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe, and the intellectually-gifted pirates William Dampier, Woodes Rogers and William Hacke. From these contacts, Moll gained a great deal of privileged information that was included in his maps. 

Over the course of his career, he published dozens of geographies, atlases, and histories, not to mention numerous sheet maps. His most famous works are Atlas Geographus, a monthly magazine that ran from 1708 to 1717, and The World Described (1715-54). He also frequently made maps for books, including those of Dampier’s publications and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Moll died in 1732. It is likely that his plates passed to another contemporary, Thomas Bowles, after this death.