Map of the State of Virginia containing the counties, principal towns, railroads, rivers, canals & all other internal improvements

Richmond: West & Johnson, 1862. Folding lithographed pocket map, ornamental border, inset view of Richmond. Sheet size: (27 1/2 x 37 inches). Folds into original dark blue and gilt card covers. Provenance: David B. Langston, 3d Georgia Regiment, Company K (pencil signature). Rare Confederate pocket map of Virginia, with provenance to an officer in the 3rd Georgia.

This impressive Confederate map of Virginia was originally based upon work done by Ludwig von Bucholtz, in connection with his updating the famed Herman Boye map of Virginia in 1858. Bucholtz was hired to re-engrave the copperplates for maps of Virginia originally made by Herman Boye in 1826. The ultimate products of his work were the very large maps of Virginia called the Boye-Bucholtz maps. Using knowledge from his work on this project, Bucholtz issued his own map in 1858, lithographed & published by Ritchie & Dunnavant in Richmond. This map was vastly superior in detail and accuracy to Bucholtz's revision of the Boye map. In 1862, with the need of good maps of the region for use by Confederate officers, Richmond publishers West & Johnson re-issued the Bucholtz-Ludwig 1858 map of Virginia, reprinted from the original stone with minor alterations (including the removal of the cartographer's name). "There are minor geographic changes from Map 1 [the original 1858 Bucholtz map] on Map 2 [the West & Johnson issue]. For example, on Map 2 Jerusalem in Southampton Co. has been moved a little to the northwest of its Map 1 location near the Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad, and the road between the two points imperfectly erased (the remaining shadow is additional evidence that the Map 1 stone was involved). Still, for the most part, Map 1 and Map 2 are the same map" (Wooldridge, The Bucholtz-Ludwig Map of Virginia and its Successors"). A second edition of the West & Johnson issue would be published in 1864. The map shows all of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey and includes an inset view of Capitol Square in Richmond. A chart below the view lists all the railroads with the length of each line. Interestingly, several additional routes winding from Fredericksburg to Gettysburg have been added faintly in pencil. The contemporary ownership inscription on the front pastedown reads: "D B Langston, Company K, 3rd Ga. Reg't, Anderson's Division." David B. Langston reached the rank of captain of the 3rd Georgia Infantry in the Confederate army, commanding its Company K, otherwise known as the Athens Guards. He was wounded at Chancellorsville. "In stark contrast to the large, often colored maps pouring out of Northern presses, the Confederate imprints are few in number, modest in scale, and more often than not black and white, printed on poor paper. Long before the war was over, they weren't being printed at all" (Wooldridge).

Parrish & Willingham 6204; Swem 971; Wooldridge, "The Bucholtz-Ludwig Map of Virginia and its Successors" in The Portolan, 68 (Spring, 2007), pp.26-39; Stephenson 475.5; Wooldridge 254.