The numbered streets are names instead, hearkening back to the family of Thomas Penn's wife, Lady Juliana Fermor, daughter of Lord Pomfret from Easton-Neston, Northamptonshire, England.
Northampton Street is there, but no bridge where it meets the shore of the Delaware River. To cross, or get across the "Lehy," you took the ferry -- from Ferry Street.
Beyond John Street, now Sixth Street, there are just Nazareth Road and Bethlehem Road.
Forks Township residents Richard and Virginia "Ginny" Hope donated to the Marx Local History Room at the Easton Area Public Library this original, hand-drawn map of Easton lots from the 1700s, with notes dating from 1779 through the early 1800s. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)
Dating to the late 1700s, the oldest known map laying out Easton's town lots is on public display until Wednesday in the Marx Local History Room of the Easton Area Public Library. Then it will go to a conservator in Bucks County specializing in ancient paper, before returning for permanent exhibition.
Forks Township residents Richard and Virginia "Ginny" Hope donated the map to the Marx Room, after picking it up in 2010 for about $150 at the auction of Lou "Mr. Easton" Ferrone's extensive collection of Easton memorabilia.
"That is one of several pieces of my collection that I considered the crown jewels in my collection, and if I would have maintained the collection for a few more years, it's quite possible I might have done the same thing with it," Ferrone said Friday of the donation.
The Hopes wanted the map, a unique research tool, in public hands after all the help Richard Hope had gotten from the Marx Room in writing several books on Easton's history. Among them is his "Easton PA: Concordance of Original Town Lot Owners Sources" that correlates the 1700s map and updated versions produced in 1859 by C.G. Beitel and 1937 by A.D. Chidsey Jr.
Charles de Krafft hand-drew the oldest of the three, apparently to help the family of Thomas Penn -- son of William Penn -- recoup the value of land lost to the fog of the American Revolution. Thomas Penn had received the 1,000 acres comprising Easton in 1736, and it served as the government seat of a county created out of Bucks County by an act signed by Gov. Hamilton on March 11, 1752.
The Penn family had hoped to be landlords, renting out the land.
"But, of course, once people got on there they didn't pay, not during the Revolution -- conveniently they didn't pay," Richard Hope said.
De Krafft's map outlined who was squatting where, who was building what and who owed how much as the Penn family agents set out to collect money owed in arrears -- and, now, to find buyers instead of renters.
"I think they had this map made in preparation for that push," Hope said.
Notations on the map are painstakingly handwritten and detailed, with names and figures.
Lou "Mr. Easton" Ferrone, left, helps auctioneer Richard Dotta find the casting number on a copper Lafayette Leopard to be auctioned off in winter 2010. Along with the 1700s map of Easton, this statue is one of a handful of what Ferrone called the "crown jewels" of the collection he sold, (Lehighvalleylive.com file photo)
"There's indications on some of the lots as to which were occupied before the war, meaning the Revolutionary War, and also ... how much in arrears some of the lot owners were to the actual owners, which were the Penn agents," said Ferrone, who is a little more than a year removed from a devastating car crash that badly injured him and his wife.
"The best thing that my wife and I say is we survived and can be seen," Ferrone said.
After the interim exhibition of the map ending Wednesday, it is going to conservator Elizabeth Wendelin in Warrington, Pennsylvania, to have damage repaired and some of the faded print restored, said Easton's library director, Jennifer Stocker.
She presented the project last week to the Friends of the Easton Area Public Library, who agreed to fund the restoration and re-framing, by William Mutschler at the Blue Easel in Palmer Township. Past conservation of maps hanging in the Marx Room have cost about $2,000 to $3,000, Stocker said, and taken a few months to complete.
The Hopes said they are glad the map will be preserved and hung in the Marx Room, with its fire-suppression and other systems geared toward protecting the irreplaceable.
"We have to give Lou credit for finding this thing and preserving it so it didn't end up in somebody's trash bin," Ginny Hope said.
MARX ROOM SEEKS PHOTOS
The Easton Area Public Library hopes to use the map to highlight its collection of Easton artifacts inside its Marx Local History Room, open to the public within the library at 515 Church St.
Staff there are in the midst of collecting area residents' historical photos of the Easton area, either as donations or on loan to be digitized and added to the room's collection. Here is the library's flyer about the effort:
Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.