Sign In

John Farmer first became a school teacher and taught map drafting among other topics in upstate New York.

At the time, Michigan Territory was in need of teachers.  In December 1821 the board of University of Michigan in Detroit (still only primary and secondary education) offered Farmer a position as head of the Lancasterian School.

Trained as a draftsman, Farmer supplemented his income by copying surveyor's township maps and selling the maps to new settlers.  He also drew for the Treasurer of the United States a map of Michigan’s first real road, which had been funded by the federal government and assisted Orange Risdon in his map of the surveyed part of Michigan.  When Risdon’s project stalled, Farmer ended up publishing his own detailed map of the state in 1826.

By 1830, Farmer had created a new large format map of Michigan which had so much detail that the engraving of the map had to be outsourced to engravers in New York City.  This Map of the Surveyed Part of the State of Michigan depicts in great detail the southern half of Michigan’s lower peninsula.   

Farmer also produced regional maps starting in 1835 when both Michigan and Wisconsin were still mere territories, ontinuously revising them over the years to reflect changes in development. Frustrated by the delays and costs associated with sending his manuscripts east for copper engraving, Farmer taught himself the art of copperplate engraving. By 1835, he was engraving his own plates, enabling him to produce maps more efficiently and affordably. Over the next two decades, Farmer issued dozens of maps, continuously updating and revising them to reflect new survey data and the evolving landscape of Michigan and Wisconsin. His works became indispensable to new settlers, offering extraordinary detail that facilitated land acquisition and settlement. 

After a few years Farmer sold the publishing rights to his maps to eastern publisher J. H. Colton and turned his attention to mapping new communities and became involved in the formation of a Detroit Board of School Inspectors. 

One of Farmer’s most significant contributions was the Map of the State of Michigan and the Surrounding Country, first published in 1844. This map was revised eleven times during Farmer’s lifetime, with subsequent updates by his wife, Roxanne, and his son, Silas, continuing until 1874. Notably, editions of this map after the third were consistently labeled as the "23rd edition," with varying dates in the cartouche—a quirk that has intrigued and occasionally confused map collectors and historians.

Farmer’s meticulous work not only documented Michigan’s development but also played a vital role in shaping the state’s cartographic history. His maps captured the rapid transformation of the region as it transitioned from a frontier territory to a settled state. 

In 1826, Farmer married Roxanne Hamilton, also a native of Halfmoon, New York. The couple had three children: Silas, John, and Esther. Following John Farmer’s death on March 24, 1859, Roxanne assumed control of his mapmaking business, producing several maps herself. She later passed the enterprise to their eldest son, Silas, who continued the family tradition of cartography.