b. 1577-11-20
d. 1626
Samuel Purchas was an English geographical editor and clergyman, who compiled narratives
of English navigators and explorers of the West into a volume titled Hakluyt's Posthumus, or Purchas, his Pilgrimes.1
The Pilgrimes consists of four volumes, based off Hakluyt’s papers, containing oral and written
narratives of travels across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. North and South
America are covered in the third and fourth volumes.2
Purchas was born to George and Anne Purchas, and was baptized on November 20, 1577
in Thaxted, Essex. After education at St. John’s College in Cambridge, he married
Jane Lease on December 2, 1601, and together they had three children. Purchas died
in the fall of 1626.3
Other published works by Purchas include Purchas, his Pilgrimage (1613), The Historie of Man (1619), and The King’s Towre (1623).4
- 1. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.
- 2. David Armitage, Purchas, Samuel Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
- 3. Ibid.
- 4. Ibid.