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Object Record
Images
Metadata
Object name |
Engraving |
Title |
The Engagement on the White Plains the 28th of October 1776, between the American and British Forces |
Artist or maker |
D. Martin |
Artist or maker |
published by Charles Smith (1768-1808) |
Place of origin |
New York, USA |
Physical description |
Revolutionary era map of the lower Westchester/White Plains area of New York. The title appears beneath the map: "The Engagement on the White Plains the 28th of October 1776/ between the American & British Forces". |
Past exhibit |
Defining Lines: Maps from the 1700s & Early 1800s |
Current exhibit |
Path to Liberty: The Emergence of a Nation |
Gallery label |
Path to Liberty: The Emergence of a Nation (2025): These two maps were made from the same original 1777 engraving by British cartographer William Faden but use this military record of the battles of White Plains and Fort Washington in very different ways. The above map is from New York City author, publisher, bookseller, and stationer Charles Smith's "Monthly Military Repository." The text was published in two volumes from 1796 to 1797, with short descriptions of battles in the American Revolution taken from the writings of Baron von Steuben and General Horatio Gates. Smith saw his work as a reference for those aspiring toward military careers. "The end I design in a part of this work, is to lay before my readers, with exactness, plans of the principal battles fought during the late American war. ... Of such facts and events I shall treat in the most simple manner ; without remarks, without observations, without reasoning, and consequently without partiality." Smith's map is derived from a section of the left map, published by British Army officer Charles Stedman in 1794. Stedman was a Pennsylvania-born Loyalist who retired to London after the Revolutionary War. He spent the years following the war writing an expansive account of the conflict in The History of the Origin, Progress, and Termination of the American War. In stark contrast to Smith’s handbook, Stedman wrote his detailed treatise "to transmit to posterity the glorious actions of [his] countrymen," and "to describe with fidelity the war that involved this great event--a wonder to the present, and an example to all future ages." |
Catalogue number |
1962.03.001 |
Collection name |
Drawings and Prints |
Credit line |
Gift of County Trust Co., White Plains, New York, 1962 |
People |
Smith, Charles |