Exhibition Catalog

In making these historical documents more generally accessible, in convenient and readily consultable form, the Princeton University Library hopes to make a useful and appropriate contribution to the New Jersey Tercentenary celebration. This booklet is designed not only for historians, but for all who enjoy journeying backward in time or who like to know whence and whither they are going when traveling forward. The brief descriptive notices explain the circumstances in which the maps were produced, but make no attempt to provide an exhaustive commentary on the localities portrayed.

This beautifully illustrated catalogue and the exhibition of treasures which it records is presented in honor of Richard M. Ludwig on the occasion of his retirement as a member of the Princeton English faculty and as Associate University Librarian for Special Collections. It celebrates that part of his career in which pedagogic, scholarly, and administrative talents were blended to enhance for students, scholars, and staff the joys of both the collecting and the use of Princeton collections of fine and rare research materials. Over 100 illustrations, some in full-color.

Commemorating the 350th anniversary of the naming of New Jersey, this exhibition introduces viewers to the maps that charted the state's development-from unexplored colonial territory to the first scientifically-surveyed state in the Union. Coastal charts, manuscript road maps, and early state maps provide a historical background to the major focus of the exhibition: the state's first wall maps and county atlases. The large scale of these maps allowed mapmakers to include the names/locations of nineteenth-century merchants and farmers, hence personalizing local history.