A Plan of Boston, from Actual Survey

This map of Boston is one of our best sources of information about what the city looked at the end of the eighteenth century. It was created in 1789 for the first edition of The Boston Directory, an index of the city’s male residents engaged in professions and trades. The map was then reprinted and included in subsequent editions. Although this map first appeared more than a decade after the adoption of the Declaration, it still captures the geography of Boston at the time that news of independence reached Massachusetts. The creator, Osgood Carleton, fought on the American side in the Battle of Bunker Hill. After the war, Carleton became one of the most important mapmakers in Massachusetts.