Henry Francis Walling

Published circa 1858, Boston

Size : 65" X 60"

Condition: Good. Full professional restoration accompanied by original rollers.

Description:

A majestic wall map of the Barnstable, Dukes and Nantucket Counties of Massachusetts that includes Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard by H.F Walling.  Walling’s superb wall map is one of the best cartographic representation of the area in the mid to late 18 century. 

The map includes many insets and images that provide much  information to the viewer.  The images include The Pacific Bank of Nantucket, the Barnstable Bank of Yarmouth Fort,  a view of Provincetown in 1858 and Provincetown Harbor in 1620, a sailing ship plying its trade in Buzzard’s Bay, views in Main Street Barnstable, and the court house in Barnstable.  The wall map also has multiple insets that include Wellfleet, Provincetown, Barnstable and Yarmouth villages, Brewster Village, Sandwich Village, West Falmouth East Falmouth, Nantucket, amongst many others. Also included is a table of distances for the State of Massachusetts including statistics tables for agriculture, manufacturers and population in1855. The map also includes business directories and a geological map of counties of Barnstables, Duke and Nantucket.

This map is of particular interest to those captivated in a period of Americas economic history when the whaling industry created great wealth and prosperity to areas such as Nantucket and Massachusetts in general.  As the Smithsonian Magazine aptly describes it:

“More than 25 miles off the coast of Massachusetts and only 14 miles long, Nantucket is, as Herman Melville wrote in Moby-Dick, “away off shore.” But what makes Nantucket truly different is its past. For a relatively brief period during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, this lonely crescent of sand at the edge of the Atlantic was the whaling capital of the world and one of the wealthiest communities in America.” 

As such, this map is a real find both for its beauty and its historical significance.  It is a view into the past where of the economic and social forces of the 19th Century forged Americas future.