The cartoon was most likely drawn by Elkanah Tisdale, an early 19th-century painter, designer, and engraver who was living in Boston at the time. Tisdale had the engraving skills to cut the woodblocks to print the original cartoon. These woodblocks survive and are preserved in the Library of Congress. The creator of the term "gerrymander", however, may never be definitively established. Historians widely believe that the Federalist newspaper editors Nathan Hale and Benjamin and John Russell coined the term, but the historical record does not have definitive evidence as to who created or uttered the word for the first time.