Jonathan Price

Although not a native, cartographer Jonathan Price (d. 1822) grew up in Pasquotank County and all his work is associated with North Carolina. From 1789 to 1794, Price served as surveyor for Pasquotank County. At about the same time he envisioned producing a map of the state based on actual surveys of its boundaries and coastal waters. This plan finally reached fruition with the publication of the Price and Strother map in1808, a privately financed project. About the same time, Price began a series of town surveys. In 1809, the City of New Bern commissioned him to resurvey the town and the new cornerstones of the squares. The survey of New Bern was published about 1817 incorporating material from an 1806 survey that had laid out the lots and street on the property of the Dry family lying to the north of the town beyond Qyeen Street. After his death in 1822, his administrator Joseph Bell purchased the plate (for ten dollars) and had it further engraved with views of the recently completed Presbyterian Church (1822) and the new Christ Church (1824). Bell then struck fresh impressions from the altered plates. These later prints are more widely circulated than Price’s c. 1817 version.