Nantucket Old Maps …. at www.old-maps.com

We have dozens of old maps of Nantucket at old-maps.com, many of them “custom maps” we made such as this 1775 map of the island. In this case we extracted the island from the much larger “Blaskowitz” map of the seacoast, and added the border and title to make a small attractive piece suitable for wall display.

Nautical Charts

Homeowner Maps

Topographical Maps

Island Maps

Aerials

Mass. Archives 1795

Mass Archives 1831

Bird’s Eye View

Nantucket Village

FIre Insurance Index Map

Edgartown Harbor Charts

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A few examples:

A century later the island was traversed by many roads as seen in the 1871 map from a state atlas. (below) It is interesting to see how close the shape mapped in 1775 matches the much later map, despite the fact that surveying was less well developed in the 1770s.

One of my favorite maps is the 1857 nautical chart whose gray and green shades make it unique,. It has a shopworn look, as the original rare map was well worn, including folds. Nautical charts focus on water depths. There are several other “nauticals” in our offerings, such as the unusual ice formations map seen below.

The original map from which we extracted this image is a hand colored manuscript (not published) chart in the archives of the US Coast Survey. Note that the ice shown is on the northern shoreline where the harbor is located. I wonder if only that area had ice in 1879, or whether ice was on the other shores but mapping was not done..
The 1880 nautical chart (below ) is notable for what it shows on land – the actual outlines of farm fields.