Details
Title Smith, Robert Pearsall
Date February 1, 1827 - April 17, 1898
Description Robert Pearsall Smith, son and brother of Library Company of Philadelphia librarians John Jay and Lloyd P. Smith, respectively, born in Philadelphia on February 1, 1827, was a premier map lithographer during the mid 19th century. Known for his salesmanship and ability to negotiate, Smith continued Philadelphia's tradition as a center for map publishing and printing. He married evangelist reformer Hannah Whitall (1832-1911) in 1851 and they had several children, including daughter Rachel Pearsall Smith.
Smith began his career in lithography in 1846 in collaboration with his father and brother in the operation of the Anastatic Office, which specialized in a form of transfer lithography. Within a year, Smith assumed the business and converted it into a printing and map publishing establishment, with several of his early maps lithographed by premier Philadelphia lithographer Peter S. Duval. In 1848-1849, he associated, but did not formalize a partnership, with Isaac Jones Wistar under the firm name Smith & Wistar, but Wistar soon left Philadelphia. In 1849, Smith moved his office to 15 Minor Street, later expanded to 17-21, i.e., 517-521 Minor Street employing a number of noteworthy lithographers, engravers and map colorists, including George Worley, Benjamin Matthias, William Bracher, George Eimerman, F. Fuchs, and Jacob Brunner.
In 1857, Smith entered into a partnership with Duval's former foreman, Frederick Bourquin, following the dissolution of P. S. Duval & Company. The men established a separate lithographic office from Pearsall's establishment at 600 Chestnut Street. The firm, known as F. Bourquin & Company or Smith & Bourquin, operated until 1865. In 1863, Smith added a third address of 410 Walnut Street to his operations that already included the Minor and Chestnut Street studios. A few years later, however, Smith left the lithographic and map publishing fields to assume a partnership in 1865 in the glass manufacturing firm of his father-in-law Whitall, Tatum & Company of New Jersey. He eventually became an evangelist, like his wife, for the Holiness movement in America and died in London, England on April 17, 1898.
Is part of Philadelphia on Stone Biographical Dictionary of Lithographers
References See Bourquin, Frederick ; Bracher, William; Brunner, Jacob; Duval, P. S.; Eimerman, George; Fuchs, F.; Matthias, Benjamin; and Worley, George.
Call number Philadelphia on Stone Biographical Dictionary of Lithographers
Bibliographic citation Census 1850 and 1870
Philadelphia Business and City Directories 1847-1866
Walter W. Ristow, "The Anastatic Process in Map Reproduction," The Cartographic Journal, IX, 1, June 1972
Ristow, "The Map Publishing Career of Robert Pearsall Smith," The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, XXVI, 3, July 1969, 170-196
Ristow, "Robert Pearsall Smith" and "The French-Smith Map and Gazetteer of New York State," American Maps and Mapmakers: Commercial Cartography in the Nineteenth Century. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1985