John Lawson

John Lawson d. 1711, English explorer of North Carolina. He came to the Carolinas in 1700 and within the next few years traveled approximately 1,000 mi (1,600 km) through its unexplored parts. His detailed, lively description of the flora, the fauna, and the Native Americans, A New Voyage to Carolina (1709), was several times reissued as the History of Carolina. Lawson was one of the incorporators (1705) of Bath, N.C. He was made surveyor general of North Carolina in 1708 and was one of the founders of New Bern, N.C. He was captured and put to death in the Tuscarora uprising of 1711.

Bibliography: See F. L. Harriss, ed., Lawson's History of North Carolina (1937).

Lawson, John (D. 1711), English explorer, came to the Carolinas (1700) and later traveled some 1000 miles through unexplored land in the Carolinas and Georgia. His minute records were issued as A New Voyage to Carolina (1709), reprinted as The History of Carolina (1714, 1718), mixing folklore and science. After seeing the book through the press in London, he returned to be surveyor‐general of North Carolina and, with a Swiss adventurer, to found a colony of Palatines, but he was killed by Indians.

Lawson, John Howard (1894–1977), playwright. He was born in Manhattan and educated at Williams College where he began writing plays, several of them produced outside of New York. His first play to reach Broadway was the expressionistic satire Roger Bloomer (1923), and his extreme left‐wing bent was even more pronounced in the labor drama Processional (1925). Lawson continued, although with less success, to write similarly controversial pieces, most memorably the Group Theatre mounting of his Marching Song (1937). Ironically, he left the theatre for more lucrative film writing, remaining an important screenwriter until he was blacklisted in the McCarthy era. Lawson was also the author of Theory and Technique of Playwriting (1936).