Below is a short bibliography of selected resources related to eighteenth-century maps, surveying, and education in the eighteenth-century. These resources are designed to help you continue learning about young Washington’s training as a surveyor and his self-education through books. Where possible, we have provided links to free digital resources that you can access at home.
And if you haven't listened, be sure to check out Episode One of The Secrets of Washington's Archives, where we chat about the seventeenth-century textbook Washington used to learn surveying from.
Primary Sources (Digitized)
“George Washington’s Maps,” American Revolutionary Geographies Online. https://www.argomaps.org/explore/exhibits-1/
Washington, George. George Washington's Surveys. Manuscript Collection (digitized). http://catalog.mountvernon.org/digital/collection/p16829coll21
-----. List of Early Maps and Surveys. Manuscript Collection (digitized). https://www.loc.gov/collections/george-washington-papers/articles-and-essays/george-washington-survey-and-mapmaker/list-of-early-maps-and-surveys/
-----. George Washington Papers, Series 1, Exercise Books, Diaries, and Surveys -99, Subseries 1A, Exercise Books -1747: School Copy Book, Volume 1. 1745. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mgw1a.002/.
-----. George Washington Papers, Series 1, Exercise Books, Diaries, and Surveys -99, Subseries 1A, Exercise Books -1747: School Copy Book, Volume 2. 1745. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mgw1a.003/.
Maps and Map-Making in Early America
“George Washington’s Professional Surveys,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/02-01-02-0004. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, vol. 1, 7 July 1748 – 14 August 1755, ed. W. W. Abbot. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983, pp. 8–37.]
Hughes, Sarah S. Surveyors and Statesmen: Land Measuring in Colonial Virginia. Richmond: Virginia Surveyors Foundation, 1979.
Brown, Richard H. and Paul E. Cohen. Revolution: Mapping the Road to American Independence 1755-1783. W. Norton & Company, 2015
Brückner Martin. Early American Cartographies. Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture, 2011.
---- The Geographic Revolution in Early America: Maps, Literacy, and National Identity. Chapel Hill: the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2006.
Edelson, S. Max. The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America before Independence. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017.
Hammond, Rachael Warfield., ed. Hammond’s Edition of the George Washington Atlas: With Additions. Strasburg: GP Hammond Pub., 2002.
Patterson, Dan, Clinton Terry, and Clinton Terry. Surveying in Early America: the Point of Beginning, an Illustrated History. Cincinnati: University of Cincinnati Press, 2020.
Schecter, Barnet. George Washington's America: A Biography through his Maps. New York: Walker, 2010.
Tyner, Judith A. Stitching the World: Embroidered Maps and Women's Geographical Education. Studies in Historical Geography. Surrey: Ashgate, 2015.
George Washington’s Education
Boonshoft, Mark. Aristocratic Education and the Making of the American Republic. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020.
Harrison, Adrienne M. A Powerful Mind: The Self-Education of George Washington. University of Nebraska Press, 2015.
Hayes, Kevin J. George Washington: A Life in Books. Oxford University Press, 2017.
Isaac, Amanda C, Michele Lee, Michele Lee, Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union, and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union. Take Note!: George Washington the Reader. Mount Vernon: George Washington's Mount Vernon, 2013.
Stertzer, Jennifer. “The Rules of Civility,” The Washington Papers. 2013. https://washingtonpapers.org/documents/the-rules-of-civility/. From George Washington’s Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation. Edited with an Introduction by Charles Moore (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1926), xi-xv.
