Carver, Jonathan (1710-1780)
Explorer and Author
Plan of Captain Carver's Travels in the Interior Parts of North America, 1778.
Hand-colored map, made in London. View the original source document: WHI 73106
b. Weymouth, Massachusetts, 1710
d. London, England, January, 1780
Jonathan Carver was an explorer and author, most famous for his book "Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America." He moved with his family to Canterbury, Connecticut, when he was about eight years old, where he learned to make shoes. From 1746 to 1759 he served with the Connecticut provincial troops. In 1759 moved his family to Montague, Massachusetts, where he served with the Massachusetts provincial troops until 1763, and rose to the rank of captain. He taught himself map-making and in 1766 was sent by Robert Rogers, then governor of Mackinac, to map the main rivers of Wisconsin and Minnesota in preparation for an expedition to search for an overland Northwest passage. Carver traveled the Fox-Wisconsin route, then up the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers to a point west of the Falls of St. Anthony where he wintered with the Sioux Indians.
Travels
In 1767, he joined the party sent by Rogers to find a route to the Pacific. They travelled as far as Grand Portage on Lake Superior, when they were forced to turn back for lack of supplies. In 1769 he went to London, and collected his pay and expenses. He published his "Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America" in 1778, which gave vivid descriptions of the Wisconsin and Minnesota territories, Indian life and customs and a short treatise on tobacco. The book was very popular in America and Europe. His accurate observations proved valuable to future explorers. A worthless deed to a large portion of Wisconsin, alleged to have been given to Carver by the Sioux, was exploited for half a century by land speculators. Carver was eventually unable to obtain government employment and died penniless.
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View the Wisconsin portion of Carver's "Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America."
Dictionary of American Biography; L. P. Kellogg, British Regime in Wisconsin . . . (Madison, 1935); Wisconsin Magazine of History, 3; Proc. State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1912; Mississippi Valley History Review, 7.