1707 Van der Aa Map of New England, commemorating John Smith's Voyages

Pieter van der Aa (1659 - 1733) was a Dutch publisher of maps and atlases active in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Van der Aa was born in Leyden in 1659. At nine he was apprenticed to a local bookseller and, by 21, had established his own publishing, printing, and auctioneering house. In 1692 Van der Aa was appointed to be one of the High Commissioners of the Booksellers Guild. During his long and impressive career Van der Aa produced thousands of maps, including a vast 28 volume atlas containing no less than 3,000 maps. Few of Van der Aa's maps were original productions, most being copied from the work of earlier cartographers. Nonetheless, when one of Van der Aa's rare original pieces does appear, his style, with unusual projections, elegant engraving, and precise detail, is instantly recognizable and highly desirable. He also pioneered the cartographic idea of separating border artwork from the map plate itself such that every map in a collection could have a similar elaborate border without actually having to re-engrave the complex plates. This technique was used to great effect by later 18th century publishers like Brion de la Tour. Following Van der Aa's death in 1733, his much admired Nouvel Atlas was reissued by the Dutch firm of Covens & Mortier. Today Van der Aa's work is admired for its fine delicate engraving and unusual projections and is considered highly desirable among collectors. More by this mapmaker...

Captain John Smith (1580 - 1631) was an English soldier, explorer, colonial governor, Admiral of New England, author, and self-promoter. He was pivotal in the establishment of the first permanent English settlement in America (Jamestown, Virginia) and was the first Englishman to map the Chesapeake Bay, and the coast of New England. His maps of these areas, especially his mapping of the Chesapeake, were broadly influential: there are few maps of Virginia that were produced in the 17th century that do not derive from his work. His books describing the Virginia Colony were themselves important in encouraging further settlement.

Smith was born to a farming family in Lincolnshire; after his father's death, he began his military career as a mercenary, fighting with the French at war with Spain. He was intermittently a merchant and a pirate in the Mediterranean, where his travels brought him into the fight against the Ottoman Turks. He fought for the Austrian Habsburgs in Hungary, and fought for Radu Șerban in Wallachia against Ottoman vassal Ieremia Movilă. His coat of arms - featuring three Turkish heads - was itself a gruesome memento of Smith's reputedly killing and beheading of three Ottoman challengers in single-combat duels. His fortunes turned in 1602, which saw him captured and enslaved by the Crimean Tatars, captured, and sold as a slave - a condition which apparently lasted only long enough for him to escape to Muscovy, thence to take the scenic route back to England in 1604.

In 1606, Smith was sent as one of the leaders of London's Virginia Company's effort to colonize Virginia. Over the course of the next year, as some sixty percent of the settlers died of starvation and disease, Smith explored Chesapeake Bay and its vicinity, producing his seminal, wildly influential map which would be eagerly copied by mapmakers throughout the next century. Preserved on this map was also a body of water, reported to Smith by Native Americans, which he believed to be either a massive lake, or the Sea of Verrazano - in short, the Pacific. He was forced to return to England in 1609 following his injury in a gunpowder explosion in his canoe. While in England, Smith passed on a tip on this possible Pacific passage to Henry Hudson, who would gain no joy of it.

Smith did not return to Virginia. He did, however, return to America, exploring the coast of New England in 1614. (This name was his own; Smith's New England would be the first map to employ that appellation.) Smith's 1614 journey was meant to capture whales for their oil, and to find gold or copper mines. Failing these, they found instead fish and furs. It is also very likely that in his exploration of the northeastern coast, Smith was the same Sea of Verrazano that so tantalized Hudson.

A difficulty with Smith's biography is that so much of it relies entirely on his own report: and Smith does not at all appear to have been a modest man. Learn More...

Jan Jansson or Johannes Janssonius (1588 - 1664) was born in Arnhem, Holland. He was the son of a printer and bookseller and in 1612 married into the cartographically prominent Hondius family. Following his marriage he moved to Amsterdam where he worked as a book publisher. It was not until 1616 that Jansson produced his first maps, most of which were heavily influenced by Blaeu. In the mid 1630s Jansson partnered with his brother-in-law, Henricus Hondius, to produce his important work, the eleven volume Atlas Major. About this time, Jansson's name also begins to appear on Hondius reissues of notable Mercator/Hondius atlases. Jansson's last major work was his issue of the 1646 full edition of Jansson's English Country Maps. Following Jansson's death in 1664 the company was taken over by Jansson's brother-in-law Johannes Waesberger. Waesberger adopted the name of Jansonius and published a new Atlas Contractus in two volumes with Jansson's other son-in-law Elizée Weyerstraet with the imprint 'Joannis Janssonii haeredes' in 1666. These maps also refer to the firm of Janssonius-Waesbergius. The name of Moses Pitt, an English map publisher, was added to the Janssonius-Waesbergius imprint for maps printed in England for use in Pitt's English Atlas. Learn More...