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Description

Map of the United States naming Cumberland and Holston as prospective states.

First state of this interesting map of the United States, published by Robert Wilkinson in 1794.

The map includes a number of fascinating ephemeral names and borders, including Cumberland and Holston in the region which would become Tennessee.

The name Holston reflects the lands ceded by the Cherokee Indians at the Treaty of Holston, signed in Knoxville in 1791.

The concept of a "State of Cumberland" would later result in the formation of the Cumberland Party in 1817 by residents of Kentucky and Tennessee, seeking formation of a separate state. Cumberland would again appear in American History during the Civil War in 1862, when the eastern third of Tennessee would seek to enter the Union as the State of Cumberland. The settlements to the North and South of the Holston River in Tennessee would for a time appear as "Holston" on some maps and in fact the Holston Militia, formed as a branch of the Virginia Militia circa 1774, to fight against the local Indians who were being armed by the British. These battles would continue beyond the end of the American Revolutions unitl the 1790s.

The map also shows the Country of the Six Nations, beginning in Ohio and a massive Western Territory, which sweeps from the Great Lakes down to the border of Western Florida and includes all of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The New state of Kentucky is misshapen.

Robert Wilkinson was active in London as a cartographic publisher from 1785 to 1825. He produced a number of nice works, including a General Atlas and a re-issuance of Bowen & Kitchen's English Atlas, along with excellent large format separate maps.