Last updated: September 24, 2021
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Aaron Arrowsmith
Aaron Arrowsmith was considered the finest mapmaker of his day -- a surveyor who quickly established himself as a mapmaker and publisher with an international reputation.
The Englishman and his company produced maps of many parts of the world, but it was his “Map Exhibiting All the New Discoveries in the Interior Parts of North America” of 1795 that gained Arrowsmith notoriety in the United States and Canada. The original 1795 work would be updated several times, most notably in 1802, 1811, 1814, and 1818.
One of Arrowsmith’s 1802 editions would be carried by Lewis and Clark, since it was the most comprehensive map of the West available at that time.
Arrowsmith was a cartographer for the British government who had access to the fur-trading Hudson's Bay Company archives in London which contained many early accounts of the North American continent. He used these accounts and those of early explorers of the region to produce his 1795 map of North America. For his 1802 second issue of the map, he added information received from Ac Ko Mo Ki, a chief of the Blackfeet Nation who helped locate prominent geographic reference points for the western portion of the continent from a hand-drawn map of his own. The western half of the continent and its massive mountain ranges were mostly unknown to white settlers of the time.
Aaron died in 1823 and his cartography business continued under the leadership of his sons, Aaron and Samuel. A nephew, John Arrowsmith, who had worked for Aaron between 1810 and 1823, took control of the family business in 1839. When John died in 1873 the majority of the company’s stock was purchased by Edward Stanford, who co-founded Stanford’s Map Shop, which is still in business today in London.
Alt Text: A stipple engraving of Arrowsmith – black ink on yellowed paper. He is dressed formally, wearing a puffed white shirt and double-breasted jacket. He is sitting in a stuffed-cushion chair.