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Description

Important early town plan of New Ebenezer on the Savannah River, accompanied by a large map of the region from Charleston and Augusta, GA in the north to Saint Augustine, Florida, with a smaller inset map of St. Simons River, and Great St. Simon's Island and Jekyl Isle.

The map was prepared for Samuel Urlsperger's Ausfürhliche Nachrichten von den saltzburgischen emigranten, published by Matthaeus Seutter, 1747. The map illustrates one of the most interesting early colonies in the southeast. The Salzburgers were a group of Lutherans who were exiled from their homeland in Salzburg, Austria. In 1734, the English Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge sponsored the sea passage of a small group of them to America. Their first settlement, on the Ebenezer River, proved inhospitable, so in 1736 they moved to the banks of the Savannah River, where they founded New Ebenezer. With Savannah, founded only three years earlier, as a model, New Ebenezer was laid out on a grid pattern, punctuated by open squares and became a thriving locale known for its silk trade. It is now an archaeological site listed on the National Register of Historic Places; only the brick Jerusalem Lutheran Church and a few other buildings survive.

A rare early American plan, now rare on the market and a seminal map Southeastern collectors.

Reference
Cumming p.215; Deak #95; Reps, Frontier America p. 247.
Matthaus Seutter Biography

Matthäus Seutter (1678-1757) was a prominent German mapmaker in the mid-eighteenth century. Initially apprenticed to a brewer, he trained as an engraver under Johann Baptist Homann in Nuremburg before setting up shop in his native Augsburg. In 1727 he was granted the title Imperial Geographer. His most famous work is Atlas Novus Sive Tabulae Geographicae, published in two volumes ca. 1730, although the majority of his maps are based on earlier work by other cartographers like the Homanns, Delisles, and de Fer. 

Alternative spellings: Matthias Seutter, Mathaus Seutter, Matthaeus Seutter, Mattheus Seutter