George Gauld (347)

George Gauld (c. 1732—1782) was a surveyor, cartographer, and member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1774. He was born in Scotland and went to King’s College after winning a scholarship, then was appointed by the English Navy as the “Surveyor of the Sea Coasts & Harbours of Florida” in 1764. He charted present day New Orleans to the Florida Gulf Coast and submitted his charts of West Florida to the APS in 1773: they were not published by the APS but became one of the first manuscripts in the collection. In 1779, he volunteered against the French and Spanish Siege on Pensacola and was imprisoned by the Spanish. The Spanish copied his charts, but Gauld was able to negotiate to keep his originals. His charts and surveys were never published under his name in his lifetime. They took him to Havana, New York, and eventually London, where he soon died, likely from the imprisonment conditions. George Gauld is not the only Florida-based surveyor by this name elected to the APS. There is a George Gauld, elected to the APS in 1770 (Member 299), whose biographical details are difficult to parse from this George Gauld; perhaps they were a father-son business, which was not an uncommon practice during this time.