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460:. Samuel exacerbated the situation by not recognizing the authority of the court and was sent to jail for 2 years. Fisher was by then too ill to be taken from his home and the charges against him were dropped. Fisher's sons continued the mercantile business and son Samuel continued the packet line to London, capturing business with catalogs of textiles and manufactured items, and the family continued to be prosperous. Fisher's great-grandson was
333:, and at night studied navigation. He was encouraged in this endeavor by the pilots and ship captains who continued to need accurate information about the shoals and channels of the bay. Over the course of 20 years Fisher developed a detailed map of the Delaware Bay with help from his brother-in-law, Samuel Rowland, and teacher Thomas Godfrey. The chart was very accurate for the day, showing observations of the exact
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404:, much of Fisher's inventory of merchandise was commandeered by the military to support the revolutionary cause, but Fisher was not fully reimbursed for it. In 1779 his son Thomas and a slave worker were taken hostage from Fisher's farm in lower Delaware by the British, and Fisher was obliged to pay a ransom of 100 bullocks. As many
313:, and every other imaginable type of merchandise from a detailed catalog, and receive their goods within weeks. The business did not advertise much in the local newspapers because it was mainly a wholesale supplier to retail stores. Fisher's descendants still possess well-built Windsor chairs from the packet line.
248:. Later he built a house at 110 S. Front St. and moved his family there. He had owned slaves on the family farm outside of Lewes and sold them before the move, but later repurchased them and gave them and their descendants their freedom. Fisher also purchased a country estate north of the city overlooking the
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did during the
Revolution, he maintained a neutral position with respect to the fledgling country's conflicts, and he and his family suffered as a consequence. In 1777 Fisher's sons were ordered by the authorities to produce their firm's business records but they refused, and since they were
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where his house stood, and established there a prosperous mercantile business, "Joshua Fisher & Sons" (1762–1783), selling virtually every type of object. Soon after, Fisher established the first packet line of
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and he was concerned that the map might fall into enemy hands. Fisher sent out copies of the map anyway and explained that the map did not show the full way to
Philadelphia, and the complexity of the
217:. When his father died in 1713, Fisher inherited the properties, ran them profitably for two decades, and in 1736 sold the Cool Spring property to Rev. James Martin, a pastor of nearby
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in 1776, and widely sold and distributed. It remained the standard map for navigation to
Philadelphia for almost a century as it carried the trace of the channel to the docks.
109:. He married (July 27, 1733) a neighbor's daughter, Sarah Rowland, the granddaughter of Mary Harworth, an eloquent Friends minister who had also arrived on the "Welcome".
429:, and kept under house arrest for a year. Although they were treated somewhat harshly they survived without severe illness, but their brother-in-law Thomas Gilpin and
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89:. His father, Thomas Fisher (1669–1713), and mother, Margery Maud (1671–1770), were both Quakers, as were his grandparents. Margery Maud was a stepdaughter of
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churches, whose descendants held the property for two centuries. In 1980, the Fisher-Martin house was moved to downtown Lewes, where it currently houses the
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Fisher's father Thomas owned a 300-acre (1.2 km) property that included a farm, and another 500-acre (2.0 km) property at Cool Spring, west of
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Thomas M. Doerflinger, "A Vigorous Spirit of
Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia", 1986, UNC Press
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Silvio Bedini, "History Corner: Joshua Fisher And His Chart of
Delaware Bay, Part 2" Professional Surveyor, May/June, 1996, Vol 16, No. 3,
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Silvio Bedini, "History Corner: Joshua Fisher And His Chart of
Delaware Bay, Part 1" Professional Surveyor, April, 1996, Vol 16, No. 3,
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Charles F. Hummel, "Samuel
Rowland Fisher's 'Catalogue of English Hardware'", Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 1, (1964), pp. 188–197
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continued to show opposition to the revolutionary cause, and in 1779 he and was arrested on the charge of being a
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died. After evacuation of the
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This article is about Joshua Fisher of
Philadelphia. For Joshua Fisher of Beverly, Massachusetts, see
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from animal skins, started a hat-making business, and established an active trade with the local
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https://web.archive.org/web/20110525185726/http://www.profsurv.com/magazine/article.aspx?i=52
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W. Ross Yates, "Joseph
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Wroth, Lawrence C. “Some American Contributions to the Art of Navigation 1519-1802.”
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Article in The Evening Bulletin, November 22, 1971, on the plans to convert
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Fisher Family Papers, 1761–1889, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
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to Philadelphia would deter the enemy. The map was re-engraved in
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Description of Joshua Fisher & Sons in the Franklin papers,
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http://www2.hsp.org/collections/manuscripts/f/fisher2094.htm
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Fisher continued his interest in the navigation of the
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from the east, and built a house there in 1753 called "
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Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society
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20:. For the singer-songwriter, see
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