John Smith (1580–1631) was born in Willoughby, England. As a youth, he worked on his father's farm and was apprenticed to a shopkeeper. At the age of twenty, he went to Hungary to fight against the Turks, was taken captive, escaped to Russia, and then returned to England. In 1606, he joined a group of about one hundred people and set sail for the New World. There, on the Chesapeake Bay, he helped to found the first permanent English colony in America, Jamestown.

Smith explored Virginia, making maps of the land and its waterways. In 1607, he was captured by Powhatan, chief of one of the native peoples of Chesapeake Bay. In later writings, he claimed to have been saved from execution by the chief's young daughter, known to history by her nickname, Pocahontas. Smith served as governor of the Jamestown Colony from 1608 to 1609, at which time he returned to England.

Smith returned to America in 1614, this time to a part of the continent that he called New England. There he made maps of the coastline. In 1615, Smith was captured by pirates but managed to escape. Smith published several maps and accounts of his explorations, including Map of Virginia (1612), A Description of New England (1616), and The True Travels, Adventures, and Observations of Captain John Smith in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America (1630).