Joseph Purcell (1750 - 1807) was an Irish-American surveyor active in South Carolina in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He emigrated to the United States around 1765 when he was 15 years old to apprentice under William Gerard De Brahm (1718 - 1799). His earliest work under De Brahm's tutelage include manuscript maps of Georgia and Florida. Completing his apprenticeship, Purcell took a position in Charleston under John Stuart (1718 - 1779), who headed the southern district of the British Indian Department. Under Stuart, Purcell completed a multi-sheet manuscript map illustrating south-eastern American Indian Lands - the so-called Stuart-Purcell map. Despite being an active surveyor, only one of Purcell's maps was ever printed, a post-Revolutionary war map of the southern United States compiled for Jedediah Morse's American Universal Geography. Most of his other work consisted of legal surveys, many of which survive, but none of which were published. There is some indication that he became involved in the slave trade. He will, written in March of 1806, was composed while. He was about to undertake a dangerous voyage on the Congo River. A prescient choice, as he died there in 1807. Back in Charleston, his substantial estate was auctioned, including 'one sextant, one level, and a complete set of surveyor’s instruments'. More by this mapmaker...

John Stockdale (March 25, 1750 - June 21, 1814) was an English book and map publisher active in London in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Stockdale, born in Caldbeck, England, was trained by his father in the family trade of blacksmithing. Blacksmithing must not have been his cup of tea, for as soon as he was able, he left this trade in favor of a number of minor service positions, working at various times as a porter and a valet. One such position put him in the service of the bookseller John Almon. Having learnt the book trade by observing Almon, Stockdale opened his own bookshop and began publishing various historic and scientific works. Fellow publishers, perhaps reacting to his social status at birth, wrote of him, "being a man of natural parts, he soon became conspicuous in business in spite of much eccentricity of conduct and great coarseness of manners." Never quite accepted in the trade, Stockdale's fellow London publishers derogatorily referred to him as "The Bookselling Blacksmith". Nonetheless, Stockdale had a number of important works to his name, including several geographies, most notably the 1794American Geography 1794 and, with John Cary, the 1805 New British Atlas. Learn More...

Jedidiah Morse (August 23, 1761 – June 9, 1826) was an American geographer and minister active in Connecticut during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Morse wan born in Woodstock, Connecticut and studied at Yale University, earning a M. A. in 1786. He advocated for better education for young women and founded a school to this end in New Haven in 1783. Morse was active in religious circles and often railed against the 'assaults of Unitarianism.' Nonetheless, it was as an advocate for women's education that Morse contributed the most to cartography. Recognizing a need for better textbooks, he published a series of geographies including Geography Made Easy (1784), American Geography (1789), and the Universal Geography of the United States (1797). His work with geographical textbooks earned him the informal title 'Father of American Geography.' He married Elizabeth Ann Finley Breese sometime after 1789, when he became a pastor in Charlestown, Boston, with whom he had several children. His eldest son, Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872), was a noted painter and telegraphy pioneer (also a co-developer of Morse code). Some of his other children were Sidney Edwards Morse (February 7, 1794 - December 24, 1871), a noted geographer and inventor, and Richard Cary Morse (1795 - 1868), who helped his father with his geographical work and founded the New York Observer with his brother Sidney. Learn More...