Private
II. John Bartholomew, senior
Founder of the firm in 1826. A veritable master copper plate engraver [1][2]
About 1820 Engraver George Bartholomew’s son John Bartholomew (1805-1861) was apprenticed to W. H. Lizars, where he developed his pictorial engraving skills. Work records show he was probably trained in map-engraving by his father, by then Lizars’s senior map-engraver. In 1826 John set up on his own account as an engraver. Lizars supported him with orders for maps, his earliest being a ‘Plan of Edinburgh for the General Post Office Directory’ (1826).
from Princes Street, Bartholomew premises on left
In 1829, John Bartholomew married his aunt Margaret McGregor (1796—1864), his mother's younger sister and the daughter of William McGregor, a farmer’s servant of Gladsmuir. John and Margaret had five children, of whom John jr. (1831—1893 and Henry (1834—1899) became engravers.
John prepared many maps for A. & C. Black publications, including travel guidebooks and also the eighth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in twenty-one volumes. In 1855 three generations of Bartholomews—John, his father George, and his sons—shared the work in premises at North Bridge in Edinburgh.
John retired in 1859. He had been an artisan all his life, spending every day in the office and workshop ‘taking a hand in every stage of the practical work'[1]. He died in Edinburgh on 9 April 1861.
[1] Bartholomew, 150 Years, Leslie Gardiner, 1976.
[2] includes extracts from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.