The second and greatly expanded state, heavily-revised, and showing much greater detail over a larger part of the two colonies of South Carolina and Georgia, than the first state which was published in 1757. The map was separately issued, and also included in copies of Faden’s composite atlas, ‘The North American Atlas’ (from 1777).

Dedicated “To the Right Honourable Lord George Germaine, First Lord Commissioner;  and to the rest of the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners of  Trade & Plantations. This Map is most humbly Inscrib’d to their Lordships, By their Lordships most Obedient & most devoted Humble Serv.t William Faden”.

William de Brahm was appointed surveyor-general of the British colony of Georgia in 1754, a post he shared jointly with Henry Yonge. He was “selected to oversee plans for fortifying Charleston, and, at the request of Governor John Reynolds, prepared proposals for erecting palisades to shelter the residents of several towns in Georgia in the event of a French attack.  Later in his career, the governor of South Carolina commissioned De Brahm to lay out and construct Fort Loudoun, a garrison designed to protect the Carolina-allied Cherokees from frontier attacks by the French and their Indian allies. 

All the while he was designing frontier fortifications, De Brahm was also undertaking extensive surveys of coastal Georgia and South Carolina. In the course of his fieldwork De Brahm gathered information on the climate, soil, flora, fauna, and changes in land patterns. In October 1752, he announced his intention to produce a map of the area and solicited information from plantation owners wishing to have their property represented.

To augment his surveys, De Brahm incorporated earlier works by William Bull, Captain John Gascoigne, and Hugh Bryan.  He sent a draft to London where the Board of Trade quickly approved it and commissioned Thomas Jefferys to publish the work. The geography depicted on ‘A Map of South Carolina and a Part of Georgia’ was vastly superior to any previous map of the area. De Brahm accurately illustrated the positions and courses of the rivers and their tributaries, located the many islands off the coast more correctly, and identified the parish settlements and boundaries on the South Carolina and Georgia coasts.

The engineer included an unusual feature along the border between North and South Carolina. The Nature of the Land in this Course was an analysis of the topography De Brahm observed when he ran the forty-mile line from the mouth of the Little River. He meticulously noted marshlands, swamps, oat lands, and pine lands.  A list of landowners in the lower right served as an index for locating individual holdings in both colonies.

The decorative cartouche reflects South Carolina’s profitable trade in indigo.

Designed by an unidentified maker, the scene illustrates slaves processing the indigo into dye cubes and packing them for shipment” (Taliaferro).

This new version of De Brahm’s magnum opus was published at the height of the Revolutionary War: “By 1778, the British had taken Savannah, and in April 1780, once Charleston fell to the British, the focus of the war shifted to the southern Colonies. Given the contemporary interest in the region, Thomas Jeffreys’ successor, William Faden, altered the 1757 copperplates with updated information on the region, publishing it in June 1780. The revisions were so major that some scholars consider the result to be virtually a new map. [It includes] county names, roadways, new place names and settlements across the entire map, revealing the amount of new information that was gathered over a span of less than twenty years during a time when Britain was focused on expanding and populating its empire in North America and the backcountry of South Carolina was opened up for English settlement. The alterations were largely based on the surveys gathered by John Stuart, the superintendent of Indian affairs for the southern district from the 1760s to his death in 1779. Stuart frequently complained to royal officials in Britain that he lacked accurate maps of the backcountry to conduct his work, which frequently involved boundary disputes between Native Americans and settlers. He provided his findings to the Board of Trade, which, in turn, hired Faden to publish the updated version. The 1780 edition of the map reflects the westward movement of the population” (Colonial Williamsburg).

The mapmaker

William Gerard de Braham (1717-1799), was born in Coblenz, Germany, and became a military engineer. After attaining the rank of Captain, he married and renounced his Catholic faith. Because of the latter he was forced to renounce his commission in 1748, and his fortunes waned. He then met Samuel Urlsperger, the Bishop of Augsburg, who was actively recruiting displaced Germans to establish a colony in Georgia. De Brahm was put in charge of a contingent and given 500 acres of land in Georgia a reward. He immigrated there in 1751. His talents were immediately recognised and he worked on several projects in both Georgia and South Carolina, including plans for the fortification of Charleston. In 1754, he was named surveyor general of the colony, alongside Henry Yonge. In 1764, he was named Surveyor General to the Southern District: everything south of the Potomac River. He would continue to explore and map the region including valued work in Florida, following its acquisition in 1763. He also contributed significantly to the early study of the Gulfstream.