BLANCHARD, Joseph (1704-1758) and LANGDON, Samuel (1723-1797). His Majesty's Province of New-Hampshire in New England. London: Thomas Jefferys, 1761.

2 sheets float-mounted and framed separately (each sheet size: 20 x 28 6/8 inches, full margins showing the plate mark). A fine engraved map of New Hampshire with original hand-colour in outline and in part, the title within an elaborate allegorical asymmetrical rococo cartouche in the centre of the top map, and a description of the Province in another cartouche lower right of the bottom map.

First edition. This exceedingly rare map from Blanchard and Langdon first appeared three years after Blanchard's death under Jefferys's imprimatur. At the time the map was drawn, New Hampshire and New York competed over the territory between the Connecticut and Hudson Rivers (todays Vermont). This section from "An Accurate Map of His Majesty's Province of New Hampshire..." provides a close-up of the territory that stood at the crossroads of northern New England. Bounded on east and south by Massachusetts, as Maine was then part of Massachusetts, to the west by New York, and on the north by Canada, colonists living in this territory were often ensnared in disputes between their more powerful neighbors. The written descriptions of the boundary of New Hampshire are somewhat vague, measured in one instance at three Miles distance from a Pitch Pine Tree.” The fanciful track of the Connecticut River as it arches east at its northern end also reveals the occasional missteps of the survey.

Joseph Blanchard and Samuel Langdon formed a successful partnership based on their mutual status as powerful and influential men in the early days of the United States. Blanchard served as town selectman, a surveyor for the state of New Hampshire, Counsellor of the State by mandamus from the Crown, and Judge of the Superior Court of New Hampshire. He served as colonel in the militia at the start of the French and Indian War, and in 1754 he ordered Capt. John Goffe along with a company of men to patrol the upper reaches of the Merrimack River valley. In 1755 Blanchard was appointed as Colonel of the New Hampshire Provincial Regiment sent to serve under Sir William Johnson in an attack on Crown Point on Lake Champlain. Along the march they built Fort Wentworth at Northumberland, New Hampshire on the Connecticut River. The regiment was at Fort Edward and fought at the Battle of Lake George.

Though he was nearly twenty years younger than his partner, Langdon had a career just as long and accomplished as Blanchard. He was a U.S. Congregational clergyman and educator, and after serving as pastor in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, he was appointed president of Harvard University in 1774; a post he held until 1780. In 1788, he was a delegate to the New Hampshire convention that adopted the Constitution of the United States, often led its debates, and did much to remove prejudice against the Constitution.