Colonial maps of the Chesapeake, from Gutiérrez in 1562 to Fry and Jefferson in 1753

Detail from Diego Gutiérrez’s 1562 map, “Americae sive qvartae orbis partis nova et exactissima descriptio,” Latin for “A New and Most Exact Description of America or The Fourth Part of the World.” Library of Congress.

The name Chesapeake Bay first appears on a map in 1590, in John White’s revised map of Virginia, and NPS traces how mapmakers charted the bay from the first Spanish map to one commissioned by Virginia’s acting governor. European colonies were first and foremost economic ventures, so mapmaking was a critical first step in founding them. By the early 1600s Spain and Portugal had explored and colonized lands in Central and South America, but much of North America remained unknown to Europeans.

Early maps

In 1562 the Spanish cartographer Diego Gutiérrez recorded the Chesapeake on a map as “Bahia de Santa Maria,” the Bay of Saint Mary.

In 1585 the Englishman John White went to North America as artist and cartographer for the first English attempt at an American colony, on today’s Roanoke Island, North Carolina. White made at least two trips to the Carolina coast in the 1580s and served as governor of the ill-fated “Lost Colony.” Besides his maps, White produced drawings and watercolors of everyday life of American Indians and of the flora and fauna of the coast.

John White’s 1590 map of Virginia. Image from NPS’s page.

In 1585 White worked with fellow colonist Thomas Harriot to publish a map they called “La Virginea Pars.” White revised it with names and coastal detail from trips in 1587 and 1588. The 1590 version was published in Harriot’s A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia and distributed widely in Theodore DeBry’s Les Grands Voyages, printed in French, English and German. It was the first printed map to show the Chesapeake Bay in detail, and its orientation changed to put west at the top.

John Smith’s maps

The English founded Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, and unlike Roanoke it survived. In 1608 Captain John Smith’s mission was to explore the Chesapeake region, find riches such as gold and silver, and locate a navigable route to the Pacific Ocean. Making maps and claiming land for England was a fundamental goal for Smith and his employer, the Virginia Company of London.

Detail from the Zuñiga map, named for Pedro de Zuñiga, the Spanish ambassador to London, who obtained a copy and smuggled it to King Philip III. The map was likely drawn by John Smith. Image from NPS’s page.

Smith sailed the bay with a small crew in 1608 and sketched a map that he sent to England before returning in 1609. In England it fell into the hands of the Spanish ambassador, and the “Zuñiga map” records Indian settlements and travels south and west in search of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. Smith’s complete map was published in London in 1612 and separately in Oxford, and appeared with slight variations in other works.

John Smith’s 1612 map of Virginia was far more detailed, accurate and extensive than previous maps of the region. Image from NPS’s page.

It was the most detailed map of Virginia and the Chesapeake region for the next 60 years, until Augustine Herrman’s map of 1673. Altered reproductions stayed in print for most of the 17th and 18th centuries. According to the article, Smith’s map influenced colonization of the region for nearly a century and, with his writings, gives the most comprehensive written description of the Native peoples and environment of the bay before European invasion.

Augustine Herrman’s map (1673)

Herrman’s map was published in London in 1673 under the title “Virginia and Maryland As it is Planted and Inhabited this present Year 1670.” Herrman was born in Prague and raised in the Netherlands, and first came to Maryland as an ambassador of the New Netherland colony. He spent ten years on the map, which helped him negotiate boundaries between Maryland and Virginia.

Herrman’s map covers a wider area than Smith’s, including Delaware Bay and part of New Jersey. Image from NPS’s page.

It improved on Smith’s work by including rivers and other features Smith had missed, and it shows Delaware Bay and the southern part of New Jersey. It served as the primary map of the region for the next century.

The Fry-Jefferson map (1753)

The next comprehensive map of the bay was made by Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson, the father of Thomas Jefferson. In 1750 Virginia’s acting governor, Lewis Burwell, commissioned a more detailed map of the region and hired the two surveyors to complete it. The Fry-Jefferson map shows the Appalachian Mountains and the bay’s coastline more precisely than earlier maps, and it is finally drawn in the familiar north-up orientation.

The Fry-Jefferson map, used by figures such as Thomas Jefferson, John Mitchell and John Henry. Image from NPS’s page.

Sources

• National Park Service, Colonial Maps of the Chesapeake, Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail; rewritten in hubnx's own words.