America Septentrionalis

Beautiful map of North America, based on De L'Isle's foundational map of 1700, but here reissued c. 1770 by the Lotter firm. A text box (upper left) apologizes for any out of date information.

The splendid title cartouche bears the name of Tobias Conrad Lotter, the patriarch of the Lotter firm, though an imprint in the lower-right corner credits the engraving of the map to Georg Friedrich Lotter, one of Tobias's sons. Following De L'Isle's example, California is no longer shown as an island. The map's colouring suggests that the Lotter firm were at least updating the political boundaries as they changed in North America, as the English colonies (green) are shown extending all the way to the Mississippi River.

The map features original hand-colour, though later hand-colour has been added to the cartouche.

Tobias Conrad Lotter (1717-1777)

Tobias Conrad Lotter was born in Germany in 1717 and became one of the most successful cartographers of the 18th-century German school of mapmaking. He began his career as an apprentice to Matthaus Seutter, a renowned cartographer and instrument maker who was also based in Augsburg, and eventually married Seutter's daughter, Euphrosina, in 1740. As Seutter's son-in-law and his most skilled engraver, Lotter was ideally situated to take over the firm after the death of both Matthaus Seutter in 1757, and his son, Albrecht Carl Seutter, in 1762.

Albrecht Carl's widow decided to split the firm (and its valuable stock of copperplates) between Johann Michael Probst and Tobias Lotter, both of whom were related to the Seutter family through marriage to Matthaus Seutter's daughters. As complicated as these family relations seem to us now, they are typical for the 17th and 18th centuries as there was no legal way to transfer ownership of a business beyond direct inheritance. In fact, many of the great cartographic firms of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries were connected by marriage.

After taking over the Seutter firm, Tobias Lotter continued to publish many of Seutter's original maps with updates and minor additions, most notably the insertion of his own name in the place of Seutter's. His engraving was of such high quality that he was widely considered to be a worthy successor to his former master. His forte was in the production of highly topical maps relating to the major news events of the day. These included maps of the European theatres of war, as well as maps showing the new discoveries in the South Pacific, amongst others.

The names of Lotter's sons, Matthaus Albrecht (1741-1810), Georg Friedrich the Elder (1744-1801), and Gustav Conrad (1746-1776), begin to appear on maps starting in the 1760s. Tobias Lotter died in Augsburg in 1777, but the family firm continued for another 80 years, with the last known map being published in about 1850. With the end of the Lotter firm, the great age of Augsburg mapmaking finally came to an end.

[AMER2165]