This manuscript, or hand drawn, map of the United States, was made by a Connecticut girl most likely as a school assignment when she was roughly twelve years old. Laura Roys may have been a student at the Hartford Female Seminary ? an all-female academy in Hartford, Connecticut, founded by Catherine Beecher. Copying or tracing maps onto paper was a common assignment for both girls and boys attending academies in the 19th century, as students simultaneously practiced geography, and the necessary skill of penmanship. Miss Roys? United States map displayed here has similarities to a map of the country produced for the Senate in 1855. A map of the state of Connecticut from 1857, also drawn by Roys when she was a student, is in the Leventhal Map Center collection.
IIIF Manifest