In 1810 he joined his uncle in the cartography business. They built on Aaron's A map exhibiting all the new discoveries in the interior parts of North America 1811 version which was heavily based on information provided by the
Hudson's Bay Company, Indian maps, and British Navy sea charts[1] to produce and publish an updated map: North America in 1821.[2] Their contributions to Canadian cartography led to
Mount Arrowsmith, situated east of
Port Alberni on
Vancouver Island,
British Columbia, being named for them.[3]
Aaron's sons Aaron Jr. and Samuel were substantially younger than John but inherited their father's business when they were young men (21 and 18 respectively) when Aaron Sr. died in 1823. John took the £200 left to him by his uncle and began working on his own.[4][5] Aaron Jr and Samuel did not have the skills of their father and cousin and their contributions to cartography were minimal. Regardless, the three Arrowsmiths were founding members of the
Geographical Society of London in 1830.[6] Aaron Jr. left the family firm in 1832, and upon the death of Samuel in 1839, John purchased the assets and merged them into his own business.
The
Arrowsmith River in
Western Australia was named by Sir
George Grey after Arrowsmith, who later produced the maps for the published journals of Grey's two Western Australian expeditions.[7] In 1863 he received the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society, which was what the Geographical Society of London was known as after gaining the patronage of
King William IV.
Arrowsmith spent the years after his uncle's death preparing maps for his iconic London Atlas of Universal Geography, the first edition of which was published in 1834 with 50 maps. He likely planned to publish it in 1832, many of the maps within it have an 1832 publication year (subsequent editions have several maps within them that have earlier publication years than that of the atlas itself; Arrowsmith did not change the dates on the maps unless and until he updated them). He added and removed maps to the subsequent editions until there were 72 plates in one late edition.[9] The atlas continued to be published after his death, the rights to publish the maps being acquired by
Edward Stanford in 1874.
First edition (1834) of the London Atlas of Universal Geography (50 maps)
John Arrowsmith's 1832 map of Mexico
The 40 maps include the following (not a complete list; these maps were found in the
David Rumsey map collection as included in Arrowsmith's 1838 Atlas. The Rumsey collection has digitized the maps in the 1838 and 1844 edition of the Atlas. Other editions of the atlas were published in 1834, 1835, 1839, 1840, 1842, 1859 and 1861.) :
Orbis Veteribus Notus (Europe/Asia/Africa)
World, Mercators projection
Europe
England
Ireland
Sweden & Norway
Denmark (with Iceland)
Belgium & Holland
Western Germany
Russia & Poland
Austrian Empire
Switzerland & the Passes of the Alps
South Italy
Turkey in Europe
Greece & the Ionian Islands
Spain & Portugal
Nubia, Abyssinia
Egypt
Asia
Turkey in Asia
India
Burmah, Siam, Cochin China
China
North Asia
Asiatic Archipelago
Pacific Ocean
Mexico
West Indies &
Brazil
British North America
Second edition (1835) of the London Atlas of Universal Geography (50 maps)
In addition to the maps published in 1832 in the above list, the 1835 atlas included the following (not a complete list):
Map with 1833 date:
Discoveries in Western Australia
1834 Maps
Inland navigation, rail roads, geology, minerals of England & Wales
^Hayes, Derek (1999), Historical Atlas of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, Vancouver: Cavendish Books, p. 58,
ISBN978-1-55289-900-7
^Herbert, Francis (1989). "The 'London Atlas of Universal Geography' from John Arrowsmith to Edward Stanford: Origin, Development and Dissolution of a British World Atlas from the 1830s to the 1930s". Imago Mundi. 41: 99–123.
doi:
10.1080/03085698908592672.
JSTOR1151137.