Historic Map : Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey,S.D.U.K, 1833, Vintage Wall Art

This is a lovely 1833 map of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and Virginia issued by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge or S.D.U.K. The map covers the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware in full with parts of modern day Virginia and West Virginia. States are color coded with outline color. Several important topographical features including rivers, mountains, lakes, etc. are noted throughout.

The map notes the District of Columbia prior to the retrocession of Virginia, which included the lands donated by the states of Maryland and Virginia. In 1791, following the Residents Act, the District of Columbia was formed from the lands donated by the states of Maryland and Virginia. In the 1830s' after Alexandria went into economic decline due to negligence by Congress, residents petitioned Virginia to take back the donated land through retrocession. In 1847, the retrocession legislation was formally accepted and the county of Alexandria was returned to Virginia, leaving Washington County part of the District of Columbia and forming the current boundary of the county's capital, Washington DC.

This map was originally published by Baldwin and Cradock and is copyrighted in 1833, but was issued in Volume two of Chapman and Hall's 1844 edition of Maps of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. It was engraved by John Walker of J. and C. Walker.