Was the Madison Map Popular?
Madison's Map of Virginia
“Madison’s Map of Virginia,” Medical Repository 5 (January 1808): 302. http://search.ebscohost.com.mutex.gmu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=h9h&AN=35906799&site=ehost-live.
As promised by Bishop Madison subscribers did receive a mounted, colored, and glazed map and it is likely that Frederick Bossler was responsible for overseeing this part of the map’s production, based upon Henrico County, Virginia legal documents that include an inventory detailing his holdings.[1] Bishop Madison’s map was advertised in several papers outside of Virginia and it received a positive review in the January 1808 issue of the Medical Repository. The review’s opening sentence was “long has our country complained that there was not a good map of Virginia. That complaint is now at an end.”[2] The reviewer found the map worthy of being ranked with the maps of New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and noted that a topographical memoir was desired.
"David R. Ross vs. Frederick Bossler"
Henrico County Legal Document, 1807, David R. Ross vs. Frederick Bossler, 9 September 1807. Library of Virginia, Local Government Records Collection, Richmond, Virginia.
Advertisements for the map appeared in the Richmond Enquirer, the Virginia Argus and other Virginia newspapers. Interest in it increased during the War of 1812 and another hint at its continued popularity was the printing of a second state in 1818.[3] A Map of Virginia was not superseded as Virginia’s geographical reference map until the publication of the Virginia General Assembly sanctioned A Map of the State of Virginia, constructed in conformity to law from the late surveys authorized by the legislature and other original and authentic documents in 1826. This map was engraved and printed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
[1] See Henrico County Legal Document, 1807, David R. Ross vs. Frederick Bossler, September 9, 1807. Library of Virginia, Local Government Records Collection, Richmond, Virginia. These legal papers document copperplates and other materials related to the printing of the map to have been in the possession of Bossler including paper, pasting board, maps, printing press, press blankets, six plates, rollers, 1 plate of the plan of Richmond.
[2] “Madison’s Map of Virginia,” Medical Repository 5 (January 1808): 302. http://search.ebscohost.com.mutex.gmu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=h9h&AN=35906799&site=ehost-live.
[3] “Just Received and for Sale by George Hill,” Federal Gazette and Baltimore Daily Advertiser, December 15, 1808, p. 3-4; “Geography and Topography,” Daily National Intelligencer, Washington D.C., October 18, 1815, p. 2.