Bonner, John and William Price

A New Plan of ye Great Town of Boston in New England in America With the many Additionall Buildings & New Streets to the Year 1769. Boston:  William Price, 1769



Broadsheet (19 x 24 1/2 in.; 483 x 622 mm). Crease tears and minor loss to left margin expertly repaired. Floated on linen, glazed, and framed.  

Alex Kreiger & David Cobb, Mapping Boston, p. 45

Prepared by navigator and shipwright Captain John Bonner, the printed plan of Boston first appeared in 1722 under the title The Town of Boston in New England. In 1725, William Price, a cabinetmaker and merchant, became a cartographic publisher, and reprinted Bonner's map. Less than a year after Bonner's death in 1726, Price acquired the plate and reprinted nine issues which he updated and revised over a period of 30 years. The Bonner/Price plan made its final appearance in this, the 1769 issue, which recorded the changes to the town that had occurred since 1732 such as dates of major fires and epidemics of smallpox.  Price also took the opportunity to insert a detailed advertisement of goods available in his shop in Cornhill, the location of which he indicated with a pointing hand. "The nine reissues of the the map over a period of nearly half a century have secured for it a place in the town's early cartographic history ..." ( Alex Kreiger & David Cobb, Mapping Boston).