Original antique wall map of Hartford County, Connecticut from 1855. The map is hand colored and shows 26 towns with many details of town centers positioned around the map. The border is decorated with various scenes and historic buildings, such as the Charter Oak and the State House in Hartford. There are numerous statistics documenting the population, education, business and more from 1855.
Publisher: H. & C. T. Smith, Philadelphia, PA
H. & C. T. Smith was a 19th-century Philadelphia-based map publisher active roughly between 1855and 1862. Associated primarily with Robert Pearsall Smith (1827–1898), the firm is known for publishing detailed county wall maps, such as the 1856 map of New Haven County, Connecticut, and the 1855 map of Hartford County.
Surveyor: Edgar M. Woodford (1824-1862)
Edgar M. Woodford was born April 15, 1824, in Avon, Connecticut on his family’s farm. A self-taught civil engineer, he became county surveyor for the County of Hartford.
Woodford became committed to the Abolitionist cause, heading West in 1856 with a group calling themselves “The Connecticut Colony in Kansas.” These settlers were determined to secure Kansas as a free state by moving there in sufficient numbers to outvote the slaveholders. In 1857, he was back in Hartford to encourage other like-minded individuals to join them.
He enlisted in the Seventh Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, when the Civil War broke out. His death was recorded in the Hartford Daily Courant on October 21, 1862, noting that “Quartermaster Sergeant Edgar M. Woodford, 7th Conn. Regiment from Avon, died recently at Hilton Head of congestive fever, after an illness of less than twenty-four hours.” Nancy Finley.
