When you request an item at a research library, you don’t always know what you’re going to get

John Montresor was a British mapmaker, surveyor, and engineer, who published this map on June 10, 1775. He became the Chief Engineer of all British Army forces in North America, so I figured he knew his way around a map, and I was researching some action during the American Revolution that took place in upstate New York, so when I saw this map listed in the Clements Library database, I requested it (Maps 3-K-1775 Mo). I’ve talked about the Clements before, and will again; it’s full of amazing documents relating to American history, especially in the period of the Revolution, and is incredibly welcoming to visiting researchers. But their catalog gives no indication of the size of the thing.

Most of their library’s collection is housed in the basement, which is off-limits to the public, so one of the helpful staff librarians took my request down the modernistic glass & steel elevator to the temperature controlled vault. She soon returned with a wheeled cart containing several items and asked me where I wanted the map. I gestured to the desk area I had staked out — all woody and lamplit, just like you’d want it — but she said maybe the table would be better, and I soon saw her point.

She turned to the opened area of the main library room, where two huge tables abutted, creating a tremendous surface area. She took the map, which in folded form was no bigger than 8’x10″, and proceeded to unfold it.

It just kept unfolding…

I can’t believe I didn’t take a picture of it fully unfurled. It must have been 10’x10′, at least. And look at the detail! In case you want to know exactly what happens at the south end of Lake Champlain (which I did).

Note Fort Ticonderoga, formerly Fort Carillon, located where Lake George joins Lake Champlain (in the upper left of the last image) and the upper reaches of the Hudson River (in the lower left), guarded by Fort Edward, which at the time was little more than a wooden stockade.

#cartography #americanrevolution #montresor #otd #onthisdate #newyorkhistory #hudsonriver #USHistory