Map Talk: The Atlantic Neptune and the Northern Survey
Join Dr. Alexandra Montgomery, manager of the Library’s Center for Digital History and one of the ARGO project leads, to learn more about George Washington’s interest in maps and one of the finest atlases ever published: JFW Des Barres’ The Atlantic Neptune (1777). This massive four-volume work was sponsored by the British Admiralty and represented the cutting edge of cartography knowledge at the outbreak of the American Revolution. Meant to document Britain’s expanded empire after the defeat of the French in 1763, it instead ended up chronicling its collapse in the war that followed.
Dr. Alexandra L. Montgomery is Manager of the Center for Digital History at the Washington Presidential Library at George Washington’s Mount Vernon and one of the leads for the ARGO project. She holds a PhD in early American history from the University of Pennsylvania. When she is not wrangling digital projects about George Washington, her work focuses on land speculation, settler expansion, and mapping in eighteenth century North America.
This talk is part of the Brown Bag Lunch series hosted at the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon and was recorded November 21, 2024.