The Only Traced Example of A Complete Set of Published Reports of the First Railroad Company in Georgia. With The Exceedingly Rare 1837 Brunswick Town Plan; the First American Map of a City in Georgia Outside Savannah.
Important sammelband detailing the development of the Brunswick Canal and Railroad Company, the first company to receive a railroad charter in the state of Georgia. Bound into the work is the extremely rare 1837 map of Brunswick, being the earliest-known map of an extant city in Georgia outside Savannah. The volume illustrates the early industrial-transportation development of southern Georgia and northern Florida, a process whose fits and starts directly influenced the long-term industrialization (or lack thereof) of the Deep South.
The reports include two excellent early Georgia maps. The large folding map entitled City of Brunswick, State of Georgia was printed in 1837 by T. Moore in Boston and belongs to the Public sale at Brunswick, Georgia pamphlet. It represents an exceptionally early American-printed map of a southern city and is a fantastic promotional piece. This appears to be the first printed map of Brunswick and of any extant city in Georgia outside Savannah. Searches in OCLC did not uncover any earlier maps of the town. No earlier printed maps were referenced in the literature consulted regarding Brunswick and the surrounding area. Searches in OCLC list no maps when in the desired date ranged when the queried "map Macon," "map Augusta Georgia," "map Louisville Georgia" or "map Milledgeville" - which were then the other most important cities in the state. No references were made in the literature consulted to earlier town plans in the state. The earliest American plan of Savannah appears to be the very rare Stouf Plan of 1818 (excluding the battle plans published following the American Revolution), but American maps of even that city remain rare until the 1840s.
The map was produced for the sale of Brunswick land that funded the construction of the Brunswick Canal and Railroad, and the map shows features meant to attract further investment to the port. Above the map stands the grand Oglethorpe House, formerly one of the finest hotels in coastal Georgia, which was later burned down during the Civil War. The hotel was a centerpiece of the antebellum development of Brunswick from a small backwater to a growing business hub. This is only the second time in fifty years that the map has appeared on the market (Cohen & Taliaferro offered the map, without the pamphlets nor the canal map, for $8,500 in 2008). The canal map folded into the work, also published in 1837, shows the profile of the proposed canal, which was completed in 1854, and shows a detailed survey of the stretch of land between Brunswick and Damien, to the north.
The map is bound with an impressive collection of five pamphlets that tell of the tumultuous early years of Georgian coastal industrial development. As various port cities between Jacksonville, Florida, and Charleston, South Carolina, competed to be the leading European-facing exporters of Deep South cotton, northern investors saw promise in the deep harbor and prime location of Brunswick. A canal or railroad was proposed to connect Brunswick to nearby Darien, which was able to receive goods shipped along the Altamaha River but lacked a good natural port. While the railroad portion of the "Canal and Railroad" was never built, the company was still the earliest in the state the receive a charter for a railroad. (The Central Railroad and Canal Company was chartered in 1833, and is sometimes cited as the first Georgia railroad company, but, as these pamphlets make clear, the Brunswick Canal and Railroad Company received its charter three years earlier.)
The city was also promising due to its easy access to northern Florida. Following the charter of the Brunswick Canal and Railroad, the Brunswick and Florida Railroad was chartered in 1835 and appeared to supersede the Canal and Railroad's rail-building efforts. The Brunswick and Florida (later Atlantic and Gulf) grew into the first railroad connection between West Florida and the rest of the United States.
The Brunswick Canal and Railroad
The reports show that the chartered rights for a canal or railroad to be built in Brunswick were granted by the legislature in 1826 and 1830 (Page 34), which would make the Brunswick Canal and Railroad the first company to receive a railroad charter in the state of Georgia (preceding the charter for the Central Rail Road and Canal Company issued in 1833, which is commonly referred to as the first railroad in the state). The early history of the company is detailed in the first of the five parts to appear in this volume, the Report on the Brunswick Canal and Railroad, Glynn County, Georgia. Here, Loammi Baldwin presents the benefits of the coastal city and the plan for a canal and a railroad to connect its deep port to the Altamaha River. The report details how the central part of Georgia lacks a good method of exporting its cotton, and how Brunswick could grow to rival Savannah as an export center. Various reports are included in this portion to drum up further investment, including reports from the navy and officers in the company. A fold-out plan of the canal is included.
Parts II and III concern the Trust Deed and By-Laws of the canal and railroad company, detailing the structure of the organization meant to construct the public works. This portion is particularly interesting as it details the ownership of lands adjacent to Brunswick, lands that appear to be primarily controlled by northerners.
Part IV relates to the Public Sale of lands in Brunswick and acts as an advertisement for this sale. Attempting to drum up interest in Brunswick, it calls on investment in the land around Brunswick. This part effectively acts as a layman's summary of the previous three sections and focuses on the benefits of the city of Brunswick. The promise of growth with the arrival of the canal and the eventual arrival of the railroad feature prominently.
Part V, Report to the directors and stockholders of the land and canal companies, by the general agent, Thomas G. Cary, published in 1838, attempts to calm investors following the Panic of 1837. The general agent, Cary, goes to great lengths to underscore the fact that the canal will yet be successful and will not go under, like other enterprises during that time. However, it is evident that the Panic must have slowed the development of the canal, for the canal was not completed until 1854.
Connecting the Interior of Georgia to the Coast
Since colonial times, it had been recognized that one of the weaknesses of the Colony was that the interior of the colony lacked easy access to the coast. Many of the rivers that flowed eastward were heavily silted near their mouths, meaning that easy harbor was lacking. Savannah was the one exception, however, its eponymous river flowed mostly north, meaning that much of the western part of the state still had difficulty reaching the ocean.
The Brunswick Canal and Railroad project was one of the competing visions to change this that would allow for the development of the interior of the state. Brunswick, a colonial town, had one of the best harbors in the American South but lacked a fluvial connection to the rest of the state. However, nearby Darien had the powerful Altamaha River, the largest river and Georgia, but no natural port. Thus, a connection between the two would allow the regions of Macon and Milledgeville (then the capital of the state) to have easy access to a coastal port and the higher prices of international markets.
The First Railroad from East Florida to the Rest of the Union
Throughout this period, efforts to connect south Georgia with north Florida abounded. The Brunswick and Florida Railroad, later the Brunswick and Western Railroad, was the foremost of these efforts and grew out of the investment made in Brunswick by the Brunswick Canal and Railroad. A charter was granted for the railroad in 1835 that allowed it exclusive rights to build a railroad in the region.
Construction on Georgian railroads was slowed by the financial situation of the late 1830s, but the Brunswick and Florida Line would finally commence construction in 1852, near the time when the Brunswick Canal was finished. At the same time, the business interests in Savannah wanted to build a railroad to North Florida but were prevented from doing so by the charter granted to the Brunswick and Florida Railroad. Eventually, a settlement was reached and the two railroads joined, finally connecting to Florida at the start of the Civil War. Cedar Key and Jacksonville finally had an overland railroad to the rest of the United States.
Completeness and Primacy
The volume contains the following five parts: Report on the Brunswick Canal and Railroad (1837). . .; By-Laws of the Brunswick Canal and Railroad Company (1836); Trust Deed, and By-Laws, of the Brunswick Land and Canal Company (1837); Public Sale, At Brunswick, Georgia (1837); and Report to the Directors and Stockholders of the Land and Canal Companies, by the General Agent (1838). These works are complete with the two uncommon maps that appear with the first and fourth reports, however, the title pages are lacking for the fourth and fifth reports (almost certainly because they were all included in this single volume).
This represents the complete sets of works that relate to the Brunswick Canal and Railroad company that appear in Thomson's Checklist of publications on American railroads before 1841. These are Thomson's entries numbers 1553; (erroneously repeated in entry 1209); 1566; 1228; 1567; and 1810. Number 1552, which is not included, is described as a duplicate of portions of 1553 (Loammi's Report).
Rarity
Searches in OCLC, Google, and past dealer records reveal no other recorded example of the combination of the parts included in this book. Thus, this is the only known example of all five unique works listed in Thompson regarding the Brunswick Canal and Railroad. Individual parts to this volume are rare, as well, with the By-Laws being known in six institutional examples and the By-Laws in only four, per OCLC.
Examples of the Brunswick map are held by the University of Georgia, Harvard, Massachusetts Historical Society, UVA, University of London, NYPL, Case Western, American Antiquarian, LOC, and Georgia Historical Society.
The map included in the work is very rare on the market. The map's last appearance was in 2008 when it was offered separately by Cohen and Taliaferro for 8500 dollars. The only appearance of the pamphlet at auction or in a dealer catalog (per RBH) comes from 1956, although that example makes no mention of the map.