Mapping Francis Johnson’s Travels

When mapping our data, we wanted to display the quantity and variety of Johnson’s performances. As a result, we chose to include every performance we could find on one large map. We displayed this data both as discrete points in one layer and in the form of a heat map as a separate layer, the latter in order to draw attention to areas where individual points were crowded together. Although things like state and city borders have changed and although the venues that Johnson performed at no longer exist, we found that a modern basemap served our purposes, as we were able to show the geographical distribution of the data and include descriptive information about each concert to give context for where it took place.

In addition to a large-scale map designed to show the full extent of his travels, we also wanted to focus on particular areas that were important to Johnson’s career. The first of these was Philadelphia, where Johnson lived his entire life and gave many of his concerts.⁷ We chose to do a story map focusing on Philadelphia largely for pragmatic reasons. On a map of the entire continental United States and Europe, all of Johnson’s concerts in Philadelphia show up as a single point, which does not tell the whole story of his influence in his hometown. The story map allows viewers to look at the details of each performance, including when it occurred, what kind of a performance it was, and even in some cases what music was performed. We felt it was necessary to focus on Philadelphia because of how it relates to the narrative of Johnson’s career.

While Johnson was well-known elsewhere in the United States, he became somewhat of a fixture of Philadelphia high society, performing there frequently from at least 1818 until his death in 1844.⁸ He performed at a wide variety of events and venues all over the city, from church services to public parades to concerts in saloons and theaters. Our story map shows this variety, and the concerts Johnson gave in the Philadelphia area stretch from the First Presbyterian Church in the west to the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in the east, with one additional concert in the countryside west of Philadelphia.⁹ However, most of these are near Chestnut Street in downtown Philadelphia. Musicians and actors had been performing at the Chestnut Street Theater and other locations as far back as 1793, and both local and even foreign musicians were performing near Chestnut Street by the early 1800s.¹⁰ As a result, the area was a center of art in Philadelphia by Johnson’s time, and Johnson also performed in many saloons, churches, and museums in this area.