Crevecoeur, St. John de, Carte de l'ile de Martha's Vineyard, Paris 1783, $2,200.
Carte de L'Isle de Martha's Vineyard avec ses dependances pour les Lettres d'un Cultivateur Ameriquain"
This wonderful early map of Martha's Vineyard was included in J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur's (1731-1809) three volume work entitled Letters of an American Farmer. The French born author was educated in England and traveled to the American colonies in 1754. He purchased an estate in New York, married an American woman and practiced agriculture on a rather grand scale. Crevecoeur was well traveled in North America and was insightful in his descriptions of frontier and farm life. His musings on the people, topography and social conditions of the American colonies were a European audience's chief impression of the colonies. His writings were so laudatory in fact, that many Europeans immigrated to the American colonies stimulated by his writings alone. Letters of an American Farmer was originally published in English in 1782 and re-issued in French as Les Lettres d'un Cultivateur Ameriquain with a few corrections in 1783.
Crevecoeur was enamored of the colonial island recalling how it was named: "The first settler of that name (Mayhew) conveyed by will to a favourite daughter a certain part of it, on which there grew many wild vines; thence it was called Martha's Vineyard, after her name, which in process of time extended to the whole island." Crevecoeur details the "Manners and Customs" of the inhabitants writing, "Every one in the town follows some particular occupation with great diligence...All their houses are neat, convenient and comfortable they all abound with the most substantial furniture, more valuable from its usefulness than from any ornamental appearance...Whenever I went, I found good cheer, a welcome reception; and after the second visit I felt myself as much at ease as if I had been an old acquaintance of the family. They had as great plenty of everything as if their island had been part of the golden quarter of Virginia: I could hardly persuade myself that I had quitted the adjacent continent, where everything abounds, and that I was on a barren sand-bank, fertilized by whale oil only."
Exceptional early historical document of Martha's Vineyard.
9 5/8 x 13 inches sheet size.
Copperplate engraving on laid paper, folds as issued.
