VANTACK, John (fl.1703-1747) — London
Rolling-press printer. His imprint appears on A new and exact plan of the parish of St Giles in ye Fields, produced ca. 1730. Vantack was also responsible for all the plates in the London edition of Giacomo Leoni’s “The Architecture of A. Palladio : in Four Books” (1721-1722).
John Vantack had been working in London since at least 1703, the year in which he and his wife Lettice or Letitia baptised a daughter at St. Mary-le-Strand. His son, Albertus, was apprenticed to a clockmaker for a premium of ten guineas in 1723 — the same son who was imprisoned in 1735 for threatening to shoot his father with a pair of pistols. Vantack attested that he still felt to be in danger of his life. His wife died in 1738 and John Vantack of Pitfield Street, Hoxton, formerly of Drury Lane, rolling-press printer, was himself buried at St. James Paddington on 22 April 1747. Papers relating to a 1743 legal dispute between Vantack and Conrad de Smeth, merchant, and James Crofts, sword cutler in NA. His will (PROB 11/754/353), dated 28 Jan 1746 and witnessed by William Watts and Thomas Revel, is in the National Archive. Proved 19 May 1747, the will bequeathed his entire estate to his daughter, Mary Stevens, “now dwelling with me”, widow of the late Thomas Stevens, whom she had married in 1734.
Parish of St. Mary-le-Strand — 1703-1711
Parish of St. Giles in the Fields — 1723-1727
Drury Lane
Kentish Town — 1743
Parish of St. Leonard Shoreditch — 1746
Harris. Maxted (1983). NA.