H. L. Barnum

The civil engineer H. L. Barnum surveyed and drew an 1824 map of Bridgeport and an 1825 map of Middletown. By 1827, he was was working for the United States Corps of Topographical Engineers, surveying the mail route between Tarrytown, and Albany, New York. In 1828, he published a book, The Spy Unmasked, claiming to establish the identity of the original subject of James Fenimore Cooper's novel. By 1831, he was in Cincinnati; a map of that city surveyed and drawn by Barnum was published in that year. He was still in Cincinnati in 1836, when he was hired to plot the northern expansion of the city. He sometimes appears with the military title "Captain H. L. Barnum."