Portuguese explorer João Fernandes Lavrador is granted…
1498 CE
Portuguese explorer João Fernandes Lavrador is granted a patent by King Manuel I in 1498, giving him the right to explore the part of the Atlantic Ocean as set out in the Treaty of Tordesillas.
His family name is Fernandes, but as a landowner he is allowed to use the title lavrador "farmer - plower".
Together with Pêro de Barcelos, Fernandes first sights what is now known as Labrador in 1498.
Fernandes charts also the coasts of southwestern Greenland and of adjacent Northeastern North America around 1498 and gives notice of them in Europe.
The areas are believed to have been named island of the Labrador and land of the Labrador (modern-day Labrador), respectively, after him.
In the 1532 Wolfenbüttel map, believed to be the work of Diogo Ribeiro, along the coast of Greenland the legend is added: As he who first sighted it was a farmer from the Azores Islands, this name remains attached to that country.
This landowner ("lavrador" in Portuguese) is believed to be Joao Fernandes.
For the first seven decades or so of the sixteenth century, the name Labrador will most often be applied to what we know as Greenland.
With time the name will be shifted down to what is now Labrador, which is designated in the earliest maps merely as Terra Corterialis.
Fernandes is granted title to much of the lands he has discovered and is considered the first European landowner in Labrador.