REPUBLIC OF TEXAS

Thomas Gamaliel Bradford 1838

24" x 27"

This is an early edition of Bradford’s large map of the Republic of Texas, published only briefly at the beginning of 1838. In 1835, Bradford issued a small map of the Texas shortly before it became a Republic. In 1838, Bradford issued his larger and more lavish Illustrated Atlas, which included the present map. This early edition, issued on heavy paper, is among the best of all of the early Republic of Texas maps. It includes all of the empressario land grants, colonies, and early county configurations along with many of the new towns, roads, place names, and other features in the growing Republic. This first edition can be distinguished from later editions, as it is the only one in outline color, which followed the style of Bradford’s earlier small format atlas. Following this first edition, Wiley & Co. of New York was added as a second publisher and the full wash color format was adopted, a format which would be used from 1838 onward. Beginning with the third edition in 1841, Bradford began to include Texas counties, which were superimposed over the land grants shown in the first and second editions.

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Born in Boston Massachusetts, Bradford was a great-great-grandson of Governor William Bradford of the Plymouth Colony. He began his career as an assistant editor for the Encyclopedia Americana. His first major cartographic work was his revision and subsequent republishing of Atlas Designed to Illustrate the Abridgement of Universal Geography, Modern & Ancient, which had originally been offered in French by Adrian Balbi as Abrege de Geographie. Thereafter, in 1838, Bradford published his own important contribution to American geographical study, Illustrated Atlas Geographical, Statistical, and Historical of the United States and Adjacent Countries.

 

Bradford's work is particularly important as he was among the first mapmakers to record Texas as an independent nation. In his long career as a map publisher, Bradford worked with William Davis Ticknor of Boston, Freeman Hunt of New York, Charles De Silver of Philadelphia, John Hinton, and George Washington Boynton. Little is known of Bradford’s personal life.