Thomas Jefferys's map of Canada and the mapping of the Western part of North America, 1750-1768

• Main Author: Winearls, Joan
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: British Library 1996
• Subjects: Canada; Hudson; Hudson Bay; Lawrence River; Northwest Passage; Pacific; Newfoundland; Northwest passage
• Online Access: http://www.bl.uk/eblj/1996articles/article2.html

THOMAS JEFFERYS (c. 1710-71), the major English engraver and map publisher of the mid-eighteenth century, is known particularly for the important maps of the eastern half of North America which he produced mainly from the early 1750s and into the 1760s. His maps of Virginia (1753), New Map of Nova Scotia, North America from the French of Mr D'Anville and New England all produced in 1755, detailed maps of Louisbourg and the St Lawrence River and South Carolina (1757), Halifax and Quebec (1758, 1759), and his involvement in the engraving and publication of some of James Cook's charts of Newfoundland in the late 1760s have been discussed at some length by various scholars."^ But little has been said about his maps of the western areas of the continent and his approach to the mapping of the De Fonte fantasy about the purported discovery of a northwest passage from Hudson Bay to the Pacific Ocean. One of the most prominent of his later maps is the Map of Canada and the North Part of Louisiana (1760; see fig.2) which was derived from the manuscript source map, 'A Map of the Northern Parts of America' (BL, K.Top.CXIX.7-2; Plate III).