He was a master copper plate engraver and engraved some fine maps for local Edinburgh firms, such as street maps for Lizars, others for the Encyclopædia Britannica and for some educational publishers like A & C Black.

[1] He was commissioned to engrave the map of Treasure Island for Robert Louis Stevenson.

John Sr. was the ideal person to inaugurate what became one of the most admired cartographic institutions in the world.

He is buried with his wife, Margaret McGregor in the north-west section of Grange Cemetery.

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