John Mitchell (geographer)
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John Mitchell (1711-1768) was a colonial American cartographer and botanist. He created the most comprehensive 18th century map of North America, known today as the Mitchell Map. The Mitchell Map was used during the Treaty of Paris (1783) to define the boundaries of the newly independent United States and remains important today for resolving border disputes.
[edit] Life
John Mitchell was born in 1711 in Lancaster County, Virginia to a relatively well off merchant and planting family. He went to Scotland to study at the University of Edinburgh, earning an M.A. in 1729, then studying medicine until 1731, apparently without receiving a medical degree. He then returned to Virginia to practice medicine. In his spare time he studied natural history and became known as a botanist.
In 1745 Mitchell argued that a series of epidemics occurring in Virginia were due to unsanitory troop ships from Britain. Mitchell fell ill himself and traveled to Britain in 1746 to recuperate. It was during this visit to England that he became interested in mapmaking and publicizing the French threat to the British colonies.
Britain and France had fought a major global war in the early 18th century. Known as Queen Anne's War in the American British colonies, it was brought to an end with the Treaty of Utrecht (1713). The treaty set boundaries between the two nations' colonial claims in America, but by 1746 the British colonists were becoming increasingly convinced that the French were violating the treaty and encroaching on British territory. This was the political environment in which John Mitchell made his map. His goal was to show the French threat on a large scale, from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson Bay.
A first draft of the map was made in 1750. It was only a rough draft, but it brought Mitchell to the attention of the Board of Trade and Plantations, which employed Mitchell in the creation of a new map. In this capacity, Mitchell had access to the Board's private collection of maps and reports. In addition, the Board instructed the colonial governors to send Mitchell detailed maps and boundary information.
Mitchell's new map was published in 1755 by the London publisher Andrew Millar. A year later the Seven Years' War (known as the French and Indian War in the colonies) broke out between Britain and France.
The first edition of Mitchell's map, copyrighted February 13, 1755, was titled A Map of the British and French Dominions in North America .... A second edition was quickly produced, probably in 1757, which included two large blocks of text describing the data sources and they were compiled into the map.
In 1767 Mitchell published a book titled The Present State of Great Britain and North America, With Regard to Agriculture, Population, Trade, and Manufacturers, Impartially Considered.
John Mitchell died in 1768. His map went through several further editions after his death. It was the most detailed map of North America available in the 18th century and was used as a primary reference during the Treaty of Paris (1783) that ended the American Revolutionary War. Some inaccurates in the map resulted in border disputes, particularly in Maine and near the source of the Mississippi River.
