Thomas Hutchins (328)

Thomas Hutchins (c. 1730–28 April 1789) was a woodsman, cartographer, surveyor, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1772. Born on the New Jersey frontier and orphaned in childhood, Thomas Hutchins began surveying and making maps in 1760 as an Indian agent. He recorded his diplomatic missions to various tribes and typically produced maps of the regions he encountered. Having built a reputation as a skilled surveyor and mapmaker in North America, Hutchins received a British army commission to continue doing just that. Throughout the 1760s and 1770s, he joined multiple explorations surveying the Mississippi River Valley region, and later the southern colonies. Hutchins turned another profit during his surveying: acquiring land. In 1776, with the onset of the American Revolution, his promotion to captain enabled him to avoid combat and relocate to London. Two years later, he published a book on the natural history of the American northwestern frontier. Later, British authorities arrested him on treason charges for sympathizing with American patriots, but he was found innocent. The British’s suspicions were not unfounded, however, and shortly after being released, Hutchins went to Paris and took an oath of loyalty to the United States under Benjamin Franklin. In 1781, Congress employed him to serve in the south as a geographer, and he was later designated “Geographer of the United States''. Hutchinson was the first to use, and perhaps invented, the Township-Section-Range system, which is standard today. In 1788, Hutchinson secretly joined the Spanish effort to fortify New Spain, planning to renounce his American citizenship and work as surveyor-general to the Spanish Crown. He died in Pittsburgh before this could happen. (ANB)