America250: Changing Landscapes

America250: Changing Landscapes

The British Colonies that would become the United States and the colony of Pennsylvania were very different 250 years ago.  Most people lived in rural areas and the overall population was a fraction of the population of the United States today. Travel between colonies was difficult as roads were primitive and largely composed of dirt and most buildings in the cities were not very tall (less than 5 storeys), unlike the skyscrapers of today. The maps and images here can be used to get a sense of what colonial America looked like and the extent of settlement of the Thirteen British Colonies including Pennsylvania. Maps come in all sorts of scales and in what they represent. Some show the entire colonies, some show Pennsylvania and others show the city of Philadelphia. Maps, created by people called cartographers, often show natural and man-made landscape features such as mountains, rivers, lakes, oceans, roads, cities, towns, etc. as well as artificial political boundaries such as colonies (now called states), counties and townships, and countries. These features are often represented by symbols, text, or colors. Maps often have a section on them called a cartouche that gives information such as scale, what certain symbols represent, the cartographer, title of map, printer, and year of publication. Look at some of the cartouches of the maps you see here and note what you discover.

18th-century view near York, PA showing primitive dirt roads and the rural landscape                            View of the City of Boston from the Universal Magazine, March 1775         



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Selected holdings of the State Library of Pennsylvania pertaining to maps, images, and changing landscapes have been digitized as part of the America250 project, and are freely available by clicking the button below.

Browse Maps and Images of 18th Century Pennsylvania

The following maps and images are from the collections of the State Library of Pennsylvania and can be browsed here and enlarged by clicking on each image.

The following maps contain suggested activities and open-ended questions for viewers to interact with these primary sources to develop visual and spatial literacy and analytical skills. Using suggested activities, educators can teach students about the use of color coding used in maps to represent boundaries, the use of symbols and scale, details represented, and makers and purposes for maps.

Map of the British Colonies in North America by John Senex, 1719

The Age of Empire

Suggested Activities or Questions to Consider: 

Look at this map.

What do you think the colors yellow, red, and blue represent?

Name the three European Empires controlling eastern North America at this time.

What parts did each Empire control?

Who else lived here? Are these people and their land represented on this map?

Name some natural boundaries between Canada and the British colonies.

German Map of the 13 British Colonies and Canada by Matthias Lotter, 1777

Changing Empires

German by heritage, this map of the British colonies in North America is composed in French.

Suggested Activities or Questions to Consider:

What do you notice about this map?

What do you think the colors represent?

How is this map different from a modern map of the east coast of the United States.

Can you think of two reasons why the colonies have these shapes?

What happened between 1719 (Senex map) and 1777 to change political and imperial boundaries? Hint: Canada.

Map of the Middle British Colonies by Thomas Pownall, 1776

Empire in Crisis

By the time this map was released, the American Revolution had begun.

Suggested Activities of Questions to Consider:

Can you identify and name the British colonies depicted on this map? Which ones are missing and why?

Can you identify and name any Native American (Indian) lands?

Map of Pennsylvania from the Columbian Magazine, 1788

A Familiar Shape Starts to Form

Suggested Activities or Questions to Consider:

Can you identify natural boundaries versus artificial political boundaries based on latitude or longitude?

How many county names can you find listed on this map? How does this compare with the number of counties in Pennsylvania today?

Look for a list of counties in Pennsylvania and when they were created. Look at the map and determine the next county that will be added to this 1787/1788 map. What was the last county added to this map before it was produced?

Look at the area around Lake Erie on this map then look a a current map of Pennsylvania. What is different? Why is the map today different?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Map of Philadelphia by Matthias Lotter, 1777

Occupied City

This map would have been created around the time of the Philadelphia campaign by the British during the American Revolution, in which the city of Philadelphia was occupied for a few months.

Suggested Activities or Questions to Consider:

Can you think of a reason this map was made?

What was happening in Philadelphia in 1777?

Compare this map with one of modern Philadelphia. What is different? 

Map of Streets of Philadelphia by John A. Paxton, 1811

Where the Streets Have Names

While not an 18th century map, this map depicts what Philadelphia would have substantially looked in the late 1700s.

Suggested Activities or Questions to Consider:

Look at the street plan and compare it to the 1777 Lotter map. What is different?

Does this map have more detail than the Lotter map?

If you were a traveler coming to center city Philadelphia which map would you find most useful and why?

Would the Lotter map be useful in a different way than this map?

An East View of Gray's Ferry, on the River Schuylkill (Philadelphia)

Travel to Philadelphia

The original Gray's Ferry was the southernmost of three ferries connecting areas west of Philadelphia with the city. Gray's Ferry was replaced by this bridge in 1777-78. This image appeared in the Columbian Magazine in 1788.

Suggested Activities or Questions to Consider:

Do you know the difference between a ferry and a bridge?

Can you find Gray's Ferry on the 1777 Lotter map of Philadelphia?

Compare this map to a modern map of Philadelphia. Can you find some of the same roads?

Try Google's street view from the west end of the modern Gray's Ferry bridge looking east to see the modern view of what is depicted in this image.

View of the State House (Independence Hall) in Philadelphia, taken 1778 (published 1788)

A National Capitol

Engraving from the Columbian Magazine showing the State House (Independence Hall) in 1778. This building was constructed between 1732 and 1753 as the Pennsylvania State House (state capitol building) and later served as the home of the Continental Congress and Conferderation Congress (1775-1783) effectively making it the Capitol building of the United States.  After a brief period in New York (1785-1790), the national government returned to Independence Hall when Philadelphia again served as the national capital from 1790-1800.

Suggested Activities or Questions to Consider:

Explain why this building became known as Independence Hall? 

Compare this image with the image of the State House in Birch's Views. What do you notice that is different?

What type of architecture is Independence Hall?

Views of Philadelphia in the Year 1800

Walk the Streets of Philadelphia

This 1908 item is a reproduction of an original work produced by William Birch entitled The city of Philadelphia,: in the state of Pennsylvania, North America; as it appeared in the year 1800, consisting of twenty eight plates. 

Suggested Activities or Questions to Consider:

Look at the street views of Philadelphia from the year 1800. What are some of the things you notice?

Look at page number 6 view of the City and Port of Philadelphia on the River Delaware from Kensington-  Can you name three forms of 18th century transportation?

Compare some of these street views to the same view today using Google Maps and Google Street View.

- Search for 302 Market Street Philadelphia and click on street view. Compare this view to page 13 of Birch's views (South east corner of Market and Third Streets). You should be oriented with the business Hangry Joes to your right. Do you think this is the same building today as the building from 1800?

- Search for 128 S. Third Street Philadelphia and click on street view. Is this the same building as seen on page 22 (Bank of the United States)?

The population tallies of Pennsylvania in 1776 compared to 2024 are drastically different, far beyond the scale of anything a Pennsylvanian in the 1700's could have imagined.

  • Population of 13 colonies: 2,500,000 (1776) vs 337,500,000 (2024)
  • Population of Pennsylvania: 275,000 (1776) vs. 13,002,700 (2024)

Individual cities changed from what we would consider today to be towns into massive metropolises. Look at the change of the four largest cities in 1776 to today:

  • Philadelphia: 30,000 (1776) vs 1,533,828 (2024)
  • New York: 25,000 (1776) vs 8,097,282 (2024)
  • Boston: 15,000 (1776) vs 654,423 (2024)
  • Charleston: 12,000 (1776) vs 159,868 (2024)

Can you name the four largest cities in the United States today? Hint: only one of those from 1776 is still one of the largest four cities by population. 

 

What is different about the location of three of the four largest US cities today versus 1776?

Did you know?

Population of 13 colonies in 1776 versus United States 2024

Some hidden text

Population of largest cities in 1776 versus same cities in 2024

  • Approximately how many people currently live in your town? How does that compare with colonial America's largest cities?
  • If you lived in Philadelphia in 1776, how many hours do you think it would take you to travel to New York (about 96 miles) on horseback? A horse with rider can walk 4 mph. Could the horse walk all this distance at once? 
  • Looking at a map, what other way might you travel between Philadelphia and New York in 1776?
  • Can you find a map of your local town from its inception?  How does the town compare from its earliest layout to now?

Click on the links below to find additonal online resources pertaining to the landscape of 18th-Century Pennsylvania and America. These materials are held physically by the State Library of Pennsylvania but were not selected for digitization due to already being freely available online.

The Traveller's Directory: or, a Pocket Companion, Shewing the Course of the Main Road from Philadelphia to New York

City Atlas of Philadelphia by Wards: Complete in 7 Volumes

An Explanation of the Map of the City and Liberties of Philadelphia

A Map of the Provinces of New-York and New Jersey, with a part of Pennsylvania and the Province of Quebec.

 

The other titles below are citations for non-digitized further readings held by the State Library of Pennsylvania:

  • Teitelman, S. Robert, ed. Birch's views of Philadelphia : a reduced facsimile of The City of Philadelphia-- as it appeared in the year 1800 : with photographs of the sites in 1960 & 2000 and commentaries. Philadelphia : Free Library of Philadelphia ; Wappingers' Falls, N.Y. : Antique Collectors' Club, 2000. (Print- State Library)
  • Thomas. Gabriel. An historical and geographical account of the province and country of Pensilvania and of West-New Jersey in America: With a map of both countries. (Print- State Library 974.8 T363h 1698a)
  • Snyder, Martin P. City of Independence: Views of Philadelphia before 1800. New York, NY : Praeger Publishers, 1975. (Print - State Library)