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Old color example of Hondius' edition of John Smith's highly important 1612 map of Virginia, the single most important map of Virginia in the first part of the 17th Century.
John Smith's map is based upon his first hand observations as one of the first Virginia Colonists. His map is of the utmost importance, locating many Indian Tribes, the first English settlement in the region and a host of other details. The first Dutch map derived from Smith's map was the 1618 map of Henricus' brother Jodocus Hondius, which was sold to Willem Blaeu by Jodocus' estate after his death in 1629. While Smith's map was the first to depict the colony, it was the Dutch editions of the map published by Blaeu and Hondius which gave Europeans their first real detailed look at the Colony.
Hondius map of the Chesapeake was the first widely distributed derivative of Smith's map of the region. The Jamestown (Iamestowne) settlement appears, along with a number of other early English and Indian place names. This was one of the first maps engraved by Henricus for his Atlantis Appendix of 1630. It is the only edition of the map where the Indian faces the Chesapeake. An essential map for collectors of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and the Chesapeake regions.
Henricus Hondius (1597-1651) was a Dutch engraver and mapmaker, a member of a prominent cartographic family. His father, Jodocus Hondius, was also an engraver and geographer. While working with his father, Henricus was instrumental in the expansion and republishing of Mercator’s atlas, first published in 1595 and republished by Hondius in 1606.
Upon his father’s death in 1612, Henricus and his brother, Jodocus the Younger, took over the business. He set up his own shop in 1621, where he continued to release new editions of the Mercator atlas. Later, he partnered with his brother-in-law, Jan Janssonius, in continuing to expand and publish Mercator’s atlas, which would become known as the Mercator-Hondius-Janssonius atlas. Born and based in Amsterdam, he died there in 1651.
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