Franklin Leavitt Maps         Links On This Page Are Under Construction

                                                                                                                              By Rick Russack

Between 1852 and 1888, Franklin Leavitt of Lancaster New Hampshire produced eight maps of the White Mountain region.  He was not a trained map maker, but truly more of a folk artist.

The maps are not to scale, orientation of the maps is unusual, and geographic features were placed with little care for reality.

Leavitt drew the maps himself (see the three known manuscript copies) and had the lithographic plates prepared in Boston.  He then paid printers to produce the actual maps.  He sold the maps himself, often through the Grand Hotels of the region, and at railroad stations.  Addtional biographic information is elsewehere on this site.  The 1876 map is extremely scarce and the copy below has been produced in Autocad from an original which is under glass and could not be scanned.

When Leavitt retired from map-making, he tried his hand at poetry.  You can read examples of his poems, including a manuscript copy and the definitive article about the poems. 

A link at the bottom of this page will bring you to a selection of Leavitt receipts and other material from the collections of the Lancaster Historical Society.

Clicking on any map will bring up an enlarged image. (B

The maps are from the collections of Adam Jared Apt, Dartmouth College, Harvard College and Kurt Masters