Welcome to the Old Maps Oddities Blog

Posted here are oddities we found from our old map collection.

 

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Fort Dummer Survey 1749 Brattleboro

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Brattleboro's Fort Dummer, built in 1724, was the first English settlement in Vermont, and was an important military fort and  trading post before there was a Vermont.  This was Massachusetts at the time. An accurate survey of the fort as it stood 25 years later was made by surveyor Matthew Patten from New Hanpshire*.  This surveyor's 1749 notebook sketch shown above is likely not proportional , a normal practice when a surveyor is making his raw measurements.  (see the Jones drawing following), There may not be a final drafted version of this survey, as this image was used as the basis for published drawings of the fort, such as this 1896 rendering (BELOW) by PVMA (Deerfield, MA) ****** Volunteers needed to transcribe  more old docs. ****** If you would like a nifty winter project to help flesh out this 300 year old bit of history. contact dave allen:    daven@sover.net .  I have original documents (copies) that need transcribing and analysis....
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The Avery Diaries - 1870s The Ox Man

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 I have 13 diaries / notebooks by JDA covering years 1867-1883. He was 19 - 35 years old.  They show an active farmer and logger before he started exhibiting his giant oxen (1890+-?) .The diaries have been scanned and transcribed for easy study.   The transcriptions are a "work in progress" as the original hand-written words can be hard to discern, and many pages need editing. At the link below are file folders with the original scans and my  transcriptions ("typed".) ; -  Google Drive Diaries:    To scroll through the original scans there is a Google trick... Select all the scans. Then Right click and select "Open".  Then select "Preview" List of the JDA Diaries in the F. Deane Avery Files   1 1867-1869 2 1871 3 1872-3 Cash Journal 4 1873 5 1874 6 1875 7 1876 8 1877 9 1878 10 1879 11 1881 12 1882 13 1883 ====...
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Did Vermont connect with Lake Erie??

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  Whoever heard of West Vermont State - extending all the way to Lake Erie?   A huge Vermont, divided into 3 sections, appears on an old manuscript map in the British Public Records Office. "Middle Verdmont" on the old map went from the Green Mountains to Lake Champlain. "West Verdmont" went fron Lake Champlain to Lake Erie.       Residents of Rochester and Syracuse may be surprised to learn that they might have been part of Vermont.  The heavy band "Verdmont State or everlasting Hills"  depicts the Green Mountains. "East Verdmont" is shown with lots of settlements along the Connecticut River.  The "270,000 souls" could be a population count for the entire area of Verdmont. (By the way "Verd" was archaic French for Green.)  The map needs more study to nail down the year it was drawn but it  may be ca 1780 as it refers to the United States of America. I have annotated my scan with bold type and the yellow shading to make it ...
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