Why early maps matter here
For the colonial Delaware shore, maps and surveys are some of the best surviving evidence of what the land looked like. Written descriptions are scarce, and few early buildings survive. A survey made for a land sale can show where fields, creeks, meadows, roads and landings lay, and a map of the river can show how contemporaries understood the geography.
They also need care. A map is a document made by someone for a purpose, and what it leaves out is as important as what it includes.
Surveys: the map beneath the deed
Most land in colonial West Jersey was described through a survey. A surveyor walked the boundaries of a tract, recorded the directions and distances between marked points, and produced a written description, sometimes with a sketch. This method is known as metes and bounds.
The distances are usually given in chains, rods or perches. A chain is 66 feet, and 80 chains make a mile (80 times 66 is 5,280 feet). A square 10 chains by 10 chains covers 100 square chains, which is one acre. Directions are given as compass bearings such as “north 40 degrees east”. A surveyor’s chain was commonly divided into 100 links, so a distance might be written as, for example, “12 chains 50 links”.
The bearings were measured from magnetic north, and magnetic north has drifted over time and differs from true north. A modern researcher who plots an old bearing on a modern map without correcting for this can end up with a boundary pointing the wrong way. Corners were often described by physical things: a marked tree, a stone, a stake, a creek, or the line of a neighbor’s land. Many of these markers are long gone, which is why deeds sometimes describe boundaries that can only be approximately located today. Deed records usually preserve these descriptions.
Regional maps and river charts
Larger maps exist alongside the individual surveys. William Penn’s surveyor general, Thomas Holme, produced a well-known map of Pennsylvania in the 1680s and a plan of Philadelphia, which concentrated on the west bank of the Delaware but shows the river and a limited view of the other side. Eighteenth-century maps and views of Philadelphia often show the New Jersey shore as a low, thinly settled edge on the horizon, which fits what is known about its character.
Charts made for navigation, by contrast, concentrate on channels, depths, shoals and landmarks useful to sailors. They are valuable for understanding the Delaware as a working waterway, a subject also touched on in the account of river navigation and tides.
What to look for
Several features are worth reading closely.
- Waterways. Creeks and their mouths are usually drawn with care because they were boundaries and transport routes. Streams that were later filled, culverted or diverted can sometimes be spotted on early maps.
- Meadow and marsh. Low ground along the river was often described as meadow or marsh and used for hay and pasture. These areas help explain why development favored higher ground first, and relate to the wider topic of the tidal floodplain.
- Roads and landings. Early roads typically lead to the ferry, to mills or to neighboring towns. Their paths show how goods and people reached the water.
- Property lines. Names written on parcels can indicate owners at the time of the map, which helps in following the Cooper family and neighboring landholders.
- Buildings and mills. Houses, mills and taverns are sometimes marked, though a missing symbol does not prove a building was absent.
Reading the conventions
Early maps follow different conventions from modern ones. North is not always at the top, scales may be given in miles, chains or not at all, and the same place can be spelled in several ways. Lettering and decoration may be present for display and not for accuracy. Maps are also frequently copies of earlier maps, so errors and old information can be repeated for decades.
A map should be dated carefully. The date printed on a map is sometimes the date of publication, which may differ from the date of the survey it draws on. When a map shows a boundary that was proposed or claimed but never settled, it may reflect an intention and not a legal reality.
Limits of the evidence
Maps and surveys tend to record land that was owned, taxed or worth selling. People who did not own land, including tenants, laborers, enslaved people and the Lenape, are hard to see in these sources, and map makers rarely noted the earlier Native presence on the land. The picture they give is therefore partial. Combining maps with other sources, for example written records, helps correct it, and the habit of testing claims against several sources is covered in the guidance on source evaluation.
Where to find them
Libraries, archives and historical societies hold many early maps, and a growing number are digitized. Collections of later atlases, discussed under historic atlases, show how the shore changed through the nineteenth century. Anyone beginning a project can start from the general methods in a guide to local history research and then narrow to the specific parcels or streams of interest. Always check catalog notes for dates, authorship and whether an item is an original or a later copy.