A Map of New-England, John Foster's woodcut, 1677

“A Map of New-England, Being the first that ever was here cut, and done by the best Pattern that could be had”: the first map cut and printed in the English colonies, made for Hubbard’s history of King Philip’s War. West is at the top, so the Connecticut River runs across the head of the sheet and the coast along its foot. Its cartouche explains that “the figures that are joyned with the Names of Places are to distinguish such as have been assaulted by the Indians from others”: Springfield is 12, Lancaster 21, Sudbury 32, with Mount Hope, Seaconk and Providence at the lower left, and Weymouth, Hingham, “Scituat” and Plymouth along the bay.

This is the John Carter Brown Library’s copy, folded into its Boston edition, and it is the Boston state of the map, with “The White Hills” at the right; the London edition of the same year has “Wine Hills”. The cutter, by general agreement, was John Foster, Boston’s first printer, son of Capt. Hopestill Foster of Dorchester and brother of Ensign Hopestill Foster.