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This new map presentation in the American Memory Web site, called "The
Rochambeau Map Collection," features maps and papers collected
and used by Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau (1725-1807)
during and after the American Revolution. The personal papers of Comte
de Rochambeau, commander in chief of the French forces during the Revolution,
were purchased by an act of Congress in 1883. Included in the collection
are 40 manuscript and 26 printed maps, and a manuscript atlas. These cartographic
materials are in the Library of Congress' Geography and Map Division. |
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The maps and views cover both much of the continent of North America, from as far north as Placentia Bay in Newfoundland and Labrador, to the Mississippi River Valley and as far south as Haiti on the island of Hispaniola. The maps date from 1717 to 1795, but the majority of the items are from the years of the American Revolution. For his personal use and later as mementos of his time in America, Rochambeau collected maps of fortifications and troop positions prepared by the French army engineers, including a manuscript atlas containing plans of 54 French encampments during the army's 1782 march from Yorktown to Boston; Revolutionary-era maps published in England and France; and early state maps from the 1790s. This online presentation includes all the materials in the "Rochambeau Map Collection," as well as any items that also appear in the American Memory collection "The American Revolution and Its Era: Maps and Charts of North American and the West Indies, 1750-1789." |
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