Elihu Barker (17?? - 1792) was an English-American adventurer, engraver, and mapmaker active in Kentucky in the late 18th century. Little is known of Barker's life. Scholarship suggests he was born in England. He appears in Philadelphia as 'An Engraver for M. Carey' in the 1790s. His is best known for 'surveying' and producing the first serious large-scale map of Kentucky - a remarkable achievement for the time. Barker, must have moved to Kentucky in the 1770s or early in the 1780s to work on this map. He died in Philadelphia in 1782, a year before his great map was published. Promotion of the map was taken over by his son, Oliver Barker, a resident of Kentucky. Another of Barker's sons, William Barker (June 29, 1770 - April 19, 1805, engraved the map and followed in his father's footsteps, becoming an engraver for the Carey firm.



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