John Mitchell's Map

OC-42

Born in Lancaster County on 13 Apr. 1711, John Mitchell studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and in 1734 opened a practice here in Urbanna. In 1746, he moved to London, where he published his Map of the British and French Dominions in North America in 1755. British and American diplomats used the map, acclaimed for its accuracy, to negotiate the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which ended the Revolutionary War and established boundaries for the new nation. The map served to document treaties into the 20th century. Mitchell died in or near London on 29 Feb. 1768.

Department of Historic Resources, 2007

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Baigent, Elizabeth. “John Mitchell,” in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, eds. Vol. 38. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. pp. 409-410 Berkeley, Edmund, and Dorothy Smith Berkeley. Dr. John Mitchell: the Man Who Made the Map of North America. Chapel Hill, NC: the University of North Carolina Press, 1974. Dorman, John Frederick, and James F. Lewis. “Doctor John Mitchell, F.R.S: Native Virginian,” in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 76 (1968), pp. 437-440. Edney, Matthew H. “John Mitchell’s Map: an Irony of Empire,” website at Osher Map Library, University of Southern Maine, http://www.usm.maine.edu/~maps/mitchell. Martin, Lawrence. “John Mitchell,” in the Dictionary of American Biography, Dumas Malone, ed. Vol. 13. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1943. Miller, David Unter, ed. Treaties and other International Acts of the United States of America, vol. 3. Washington, D.C: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1933. Mitchell-Lewis Family Bible Record. Copy in Library of Virginia Bible Records Collection as Acc. 25212. Pritchard, Margaret Beck, and Henry G. Taliaferro, Degrees of Latitude: Mapping Colonial America. New York: Henry N. Abrams, Inc., for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2002. Reps, John W. Tidewater Towns: City Planning in Colonial Virginia and Maryland. Williamsburg, VA: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1972. Ristow, Walter W. “John Mitchell’s Map of the British and French Dominions in North America,” in A la Carte, Walter A. Ristow, comp. Washington, D.C: The Library of Congress, 1972. Schwartz, Seymour I., and Ralph E. Ehrenburg. The Mapping of America. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1980. Stephenson, Richard W., and Marianne M. McKee. Virginia in Maps: Four Hundred Years of Settlement, Growth, and Development. Richmond, VA: the Library of Virginia, 2000. Ryland, Evelyn Q. et al. Urbanna: a Port Town in Virginia. Charlotte, NC: Delmar Publishing Company, 1980. Reprint 1993, the Town of Urbanna.