Thomas Hutchins

For the former Maryland State Police Superintendent, see Thomas E. Hutchins.

Thomas Hutchins (1730 – April 18, 1789, Pittsburgh) was an American military engineer, cartographer, geographer and surveyor.

He joined the militia during the French and Indian War and later took a regular commission with British forces. He resigned this in 1780 during the American War of Independence.

Hutchins was the first and only Geographer of the United States (see Department of the Geographer to the Army, 1777-1783) from 1781. He became an early advocate of Manifest Destiny, proposing that the United States should annex West Florida and Louisiana, which were then controlled by Spain.

Hutchins died on assignment while surveying the Seven Ranges.

Sources

• The Lewis and Clark Journal of Discovery
• "Thomas Hutchins", Ohio History Central: An Online Encyclopedia of Ohio History, Ohio Historical Society, 2005.
• Hicks, Fredrick (1904). "Biographical Sketch of Thomas Hutchins". In Hicks, Fredrick. A Topographical Description of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and North Carolina, reprinted from the original edition of 1778. Cleveland: The Burrow Brothers Company. pp. 7–51. http://books.google.com/books?id=irTRAAAAMAAJ&pr=PA7. Retrieved 1-12-2010. 
• "Thomas Hutchins". Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography. 3. 1887. p. 330. http://books.google.com/books?id=g5sLAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA330.  Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography

External Links

• The Thomas Hutchins Papers, spanning the bulk of Hutchins's career from the 1750s to the 1780s, are available for research use at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.