Following her London-based husband John's death in 1762, Mary Ann Rocque administered his estate and carried on his map business for six years as the publisher of his works. This 1761 map of America published by "M.A. Rocque" was protected by an Act of Parliament, as it states under the bottom neatline, meaning that it was copyrighted and there were penalties for stealing the design and reusing it under another name. Mary Ann sometimes used her initials in the imprint, as on this map. Consequently, much of her work was unrecognized as that produced by a woman in the map trade.