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Category: 17th century cartography

A page from William Hacke's atlas.

William Hacke: A Pirate’s Cartographer

Posted by: Cynthia Smith

William Hacke was one of the most prolific manuscript chart makers for his time. According to the Oxford  Dictionary of National Biography Hacke produced over 300 navigational charts from 1682 to 1702. In this post I will briefly discuss his career and his role in the pardon of the notorious pirate Bartholomew Sharp. William Hacke was …

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

Mappy Thanksgiving!

Posted by: Ed Redmond

According to lore, the very first Thanksgiving was celebrated in what is today Plymouth, Massachusetts. The location owes its name to the English port of Plymouth where the settlers, also referred to as Pilgrims, began their transatlantic voyage. The Mayflower set sail in September 1620 and arrived near Cape Cod, Massachusetts in December 1620. After …

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

Deciphering the Land: An Unknown Estate Survey Book from Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Century Italy

Posted by: John Hessler

The following is a guest post by Margherita Pampinella, an Associate Professor of Italian at Towson University in Maryland. An expert in the poetry of Dante, I introduced her to this collection of completely unstudied manuscripts and cadastral surveys several years ago and she was hooked. Since that time she has spent countless hours deciphering the …