A Map of Concord the Old Musketaquid Plantation

A fun 1920s map of ‘The Birthplace of Liberty.’

This charming pictorial map of Concord, Massachusetts, was drawn by Boston artist Helen Bodley and published by Houghton Mifflin in 1928. It was created during a major 1920s revival of decorative mapmaking known as the Golden Age of Pictorial Cartography. The inviting work blends Concord’s early history, its role in the Revolutionary War, and its famous 19th-century authors into a single, colorful landscape. The primary image focuses on the historic town center, while a small inset map in the corner outlines the original boundaries of the 1635 “Musketaquid Plantation.”

Long before European settlers arrived, the region was known as Musketaquid (meaning “grassy river”), a Native American farming and trading hub. Bodley highlights this history in the title artwork, which shows a colonial family meeting a Native American man, alongside labels marking ancestral Indigenous homes. The region’s agricultural relevance is celebrated – Concord grapes hang in bundles. The sides of the map are lined with twenty architectural illustrations showing famous local buildings, such as the Old Manse and the homes of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The map also heavily emphasizes Concord’s Revolutionary War history, featuring depictions of Paul Revere’s ride and a British soldier facing off against a Minuteman. For the Boston buyers of 1928, this map tapped into a strong post-World War I trend called the Colonial Revival. Facing rapid modernization and industrial growth, people in the 1920s romanticized early New England as the birthplace of American heritage. Bodley acknowledges her contemporary audience by scattered drawings of 1920s golfers and tennis players alongside 18th-century stagecoaches.