Pont, TIMOTHY

Pont, TIMOTHY (c. 1560–c. 1630), a pioneer in Scottish geography and map-making, was the son of Robert Pont (1524–1606), a celebrated Edinburgh minister. He graduated at St Andrews in 1584, was minister of Dunnet in Caithness (1601–8), and in 1609 subscribed for 2000 acres of forfeited lands in Ulster. ‘He was,’ says Bishop Nicholson, ‘by nature and education a complete mathematician, and the first projector of a Scotch atlas. To that great purpose he personally surveyed all the several counties and isles of the kingdom; took draughts of ‘em upon the spot, and added such cursory observations on the monuments of antiquity and other curiosities as were proper for the furnishing out of future descriptions. He was unhappily surpris’d by death;’ but his collections were rescued from destruction and oblivion by Sir John Scott of Scotstarvet, and his maps at last appeared in Blaeu’s magnificent Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (vol. v. Amst. 1654). See Dobie’s Cunninghame Topographised by Timothy Pont (1876).