Warner-Hanna Map of Baltimore 1801

Anyone who knows me knows my love of maps, so when I came across the pieces of the Warner-Hanna 1804 map of Baltimore in our archives, I was so thrilled. It was in pieces, so I scanned each one and then put them back together digitally.

It is incredibly detailed, and shows the homes and gardens of those living in Baltimore at that period, including many of our early members, and one of my ancestors. The map was initially made by Charles Varle, but it didn’t sell well, so he sold the copper plates to Warner & Hanna who republished it without attribution. It was republished in the 1870’s and then again in the 1947. I have a suspicion that ours is the 1870 map, not the 1801 map.

When I first put this map on my Facebook page, someone sent me an image of the Warner & Hanna map that had been hand-colored.

Somewhere down the rabbit-hole, I found this amazing essay on the houses and their gardens on the Warner & Hanna map, and contemporary paintings that actually showed them. I am seriously in awe of the person who researched this.

Here’s a property from the W&H map, (it’s just above the W&H logo on the map above).

and here’s the painting of the same property. It’s now in the Winterthur Museum.

This truly amazes me.