Existing comment:
Early Map of the State of Kentucky
The state of Kentucky was admitted to the Union on June 1, 1792, making it the fifteenth state of the United States. In 1793, Elihu Barker created his Map of Kentucky from Actual Survey, the most accurate map of Kentucky at the time. The map includes Kentucky as well as the bordering "North Western Territory," "Virginia," and the "Tennassee [sic] Government." The map divides Kentucky into nine counties, but it does not define precise county borders. It illustrates the mountains of eastern Kentucky and those between the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers in western Kentucky and indicates salt licks throughout the state as well as principal trails, settlements, and towns, which include Washington, Charleston, Lexington, Versailles, Louisville, and Stanford. Barker also provides useful descriptive notes, such as "fertile high land where it is reported are quantities of stones of a sulphurous effluvia" and "barren naked land." The map was engraved for Mathew Carey, an immigrant from Ireland who in 1795 published the first atlas in the United States. |