Mitchell John

Botanist physician author

Mitchell was the physician of the poor of Christ Church Parish in Middlesex County, Virginia, for some time following 1735, and received his compensation in tobacco; he was made justice of the peace in that county in 1738. He knew or corresponded with John Bartram, Benjamin Franklin, Cadwallader Colden, Carl von Linné (Linn'us), J. F. Grovenius, Peter Collinson, Pehr Kalm, John Clark, Alexander Munro, the Earl of Bute, and many others, including the Duke of Argyle with whom he traveled in Scotland in 1749. He lived at Urbanna, Virginia, and practiced his profession successfully there and nearby for eleven years following 1735, yet he himself had to leave America in 1746 because of persistent ill health. On the voyage home, his ship was attacked by a French privateer and he lost valuable botanical collections, diaries, and medical notes, some of which were irreparably damaged before being returned to him. He resided chiefly in or near London after leaving Virginia. In 1751-53, he aspired to be postmaster general of the American Colonies. He was intimate with George Dunk, Earl of Halifax, in or before 1753. Through this intimacy, he doubtless secured access to the great depot of American manuscript maps and geographical materials in the archives of the Board of Trade and obtained the opportunity to compile his Map of the British and French Dominions in North America with the Roads, Distances, Limits, and Extent of the Settlements, scale 1:2, 000, 000. It was published at London, under the auspices of the board, shortly after February 13, 1755. Twenty years later the fourth English edition appeared, with the title simplified by the substitution of the words British Colonies for the words British and French Dominions. In the intervening years, the map had been printed at least five times in England; it was also translated and printed eight times in France, twice in The Netherlands, and twice in unacknowledged plagiarism by Antonio Zatta in Italy. There was also a full-scale French reproduction of two parts of the map during the American Revolution. Portions of the map were copied twice in Spain. Its quality and timeliness were attested further by more than a score of small-scale, simplified plagiarisms published in England between 1755 and 1782, including such well-known maps as those of Jean Palairet; none of this acknowledged indebtedness to Mitchell. The whole map and different portions of it have since been reproduced in the publications of half a dozen historical and geographical societies in the United States and Canada, and officially by the British Foreign Office, the Province of Ontario, the Province of Quebec, the Dominion of Canada (1910 and 1926), the states of Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Virginia, and by the government of the United States of America. The map is thought to have been in use in the British House of Commons during the debate on the Quebec Act of 1774; it is known to have hung in the halls of Congress in 1802 and several times subsequently. It was used in the peace negotiations at the end of the American Revolution, in the discussion of British land grants in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and in scores of controversies involving the boundary lines existing at the time of its publication. Great Britain and the United States agreed to its official status in the Convention of Sept. 29, 1827; the King of The Netherlands made one of his conclusions, albeit an erroneous one, after using it in 1831; it exerted substantial influence in the negotiation and ratification of the Webster-Ashburton treaty of 1842, and serious argument was based upon it by Great Britain before the Court of Arbitration at The Hague in 1910 in connection with the North Atlantic Coast Fisheries Arbitration. It was submitted in evidence before the Law Lords of the British Privy Council in 1926 in the appeal of Price Brothers & Company, Limited, from a judgment of the supreme court of Canada, and in 1926-27 in the Canada-Newfoundland (Labrador) boundary case. It was used as evidence before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1926 in the Wisconsin-Michigan boundary case, in 1926-27 in the Great Lakes level case, and in 1932 in the New Jersey-Delaware boundary case.

Mitchell John

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Botanist physician author

Background

John Mitchell was born probably in the British Isles, though one contemporary understood that he was a native of Virginia. He could not have emigrated to Virginia until 1721 or 1725 at the earliest.

Education

Mitchell received his first instruction in botany from Dr. Charles Alston, of the University of Edinburgh, and perhaps held the degree of M. D. , but whether from that institution or another is uncertain.

Career

Mitchell was the physician of the poor of Christ Church Parish in Middlesex County, Virginia, for some time following 1735, and received his compensation in tobacco; he was made justice of the peace in that county in 1738. He knew or corresponded with John Bartram, Benjamin Franklin, Cadwallader Colden, Carl von Linné (Linn'us), J. F. Grovenius, Peter Collinson, Pehr Kalm, John Clark, Alexander Munro, the Earl of Bute, and many others, including the Duke of Argyle with whom he traveled in Scotland in 1749. He lived at Urbanna, Virginia, and practiced his profession successfully there and nearby for eleven years following 1735, yet he himself had to leave America in 1746 because of persistent ill health. On the voyage home, his ship was attacked by a French privateer and he lost valuable botanical collections, diaries, and medical notes, some of which were irreparably damaged before being returned to him. He resided chiefly in or near London after leaving Virginia. In 1751-53, he aspired to be postmaster general of the American Colonies. He was intimate with George Dunk, Earl of Halifax, in or before 1753. Through this intimacy, he doubtless secured access to the great depot of American manuscript maps and geographical materials in the archives of the Board of Trade and obtained the opportunity to compile his Map of the British and French Dominions in North America with the Roads, Distances, Limits, and Extent of the Settlements, scale 1:2, 000, 000. It was published at London, under the auspices of the board, shortly after February 13, 1755. Twenty years later the fourth English edition appeared, with the title simplified by the substitution of the words British Colonies for the words British and French Dominions. In the intervening years, the map had been printed at least five times in England; it was also translated and printed eight times in France, twice in The Netherlands, and twice in unacknowledged plagiarism by Antonio Zatta in Italy. There was also a full-scale French reproduction of two parts of the map during the American Revolution. Portions of the map were copied twice in Spain. Its quality and timeliness were attested further by more than a score of small-scale, simplified plagiarisms published in England between 1755 and 1782, including such well-known maps as those of Jean Palairet; none of this acknowledged indebtedness to Mitchell.

The whole map and different portions of it have since been reproduced in the publications of half a dozen historical and geographical societies in the United States and Canada, and officially by the British Foreign Office, the Province of Ontario, the Province of Quebec, the Dominion of Canada (1910 and 1926), the states of Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Virginia, and by the government of the United States of America. The map is thought to have been in use in the British House of Commons during the debate on the Quebec Act of 1774; it is known to have hung in the halls of Congress in 1802 and several times subsequently. It was used in the peace negotiations at the end of the American Revolution, in the discussion of British land grants in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and in scores of controversies involving the boundary lines existing at the time of its publication. Great Britain and the United States agreed to its official status in the Convention of Sept. 29, 1827; the King of The Netherlands made one of his conclusions, albeit an erroneous one, after using it in 1831; it exerted substantial influence in the negotiation and ratification of the Webster-Ashburton treaty of 1842, and serious argument was based upon it by Great Britain before the Court of Arbitration at The Hague in 1910 in connection with the North Atlantic Coast Fisheries Arbitration. It was submitted in evidence before the Law Lords of the British Privy Council in 1926 in the appeal of Price Brothers & Company, Limited, from a judgment of the supreme court of Canada, and in 1926-27 in the Canada-Newfoundland (Labrador) boundary case. It was used as evidence before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1926 in the Wisconsin-Michigan boundary case, in 1926-27 in the Great Lakes level case, and in 1932 in the New Jersey-Delaware boundary case.

Achievements

Mitchell's versatility is indicated by his writings, which include, in addition to a number of professional letters, a discussion of the principles of botany and zoology, written in 1738. He is also generally credited with being the author of two anonymous books on contemporary problems: The Contest in America between Great Britain and France (1757), and The Present State of Great Britain and North America (1767). With less certainty, a work entitled American Husbandry (1775) has been attributed to him, and, with still less plausibility, A New and Complete History of America, of which three volumes appeared in 1756. His reputation in medicine is established because his method of treating yellow fever, as practiced after his death by Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia, is thought to have saved more than six thousand lives in that city during the epidemic of 1793. Mitchell's letters to Cadwallader Colden and Benjamin Franklin describing this method, which was the result of experience in Virginia epidemics in 1737, 1741, and 1742, were published, wholly or in part, in the Philadelphia Medical Museum, and the American Medical and Philosophical Register. As a botanist, Mitchell collected and described many plants and introduced many into the permanent flora of the British Isles, although not all the new genera and species which he proposed turned out to be really new. An American partridge berry, Mitchella repens, was named for him. In 1747, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. His most important work, however, was the great map which he commenced to make in 1750 and published five years later. Without serious doubt, Mitchell's is the most important map in American history.

Religion

Mitchell may have been a Quaker.

Membership

a fellow of the Royal Society, a fellow of the Royal Society

Connections

There is no information about his personal life.

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Mitchell John

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