Benjamin Banneker

Early life

Benjamin Banneker was born in Maryland, near Baltimore, on 9 November 1731. His father, Robert, was a formerly enslaved man who had gained his freedom and farmed; his mother was Mary Banneky. His maternal grandmother, Molly Welsh, was an Englishwoman transported to the colony as a convict, and she taught him to read and write. He attended a Quaker school briefly before farm work took him away from formal schooling.

In his early twenties, using a borrowed pocket watch as a model, he carved a striking clock entirely from wood. It kept time for decades and made him known locally. The Library of Congress repeats the tradition that it was the first clock built in America; that larger claim is hard to verify and is best treated with caution.

Astronomer

The Ellicott family settled nearby in 1772. In 1788 George Ellicott lent Banneker books on astronomy and instruments. Then in his late fifties, Banneker taught himself enough mathematics and astronomy to calculate eclipses, and in 1789 he correctly predicted a solar eclipse.

Surveying the federal district

In 1791 surveyor Andrew Ellicott was charged with laying out the ten-mile-square federal district on the Potomac and hired Banneker as an assistant. Banneker left his farm in February 1791 and spent about three months near Alexandria, Virginia, working nights with astronomical instruments to fix positions for the boundary. Records found among the Thomas Jefferson Papers show he was paid $2 a day, compared with Ellicott's $5.

A popular story claims that Banneker rebuilt Pierre L'Enfant's city plan from memory after L'Enfant was dismissed. The American Philosophical Society states there is no evidence for this. A Library of Congress blog notes only that Ellicott, and possibly Banneker, reconstructed the plan from smaller copies of L'Enfant's drawings.

Almanacs and the letter to Jefferson

Banneker calculated ephemerides for almanacs. With help from abolitionists, including James Pemberton of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, his first almanac was published in 1792, and others followed through the decade. Sources differ on the last year.

On 19 August 1791 he sent Thomas Jefferson a manuscript of his almanac with a letter that challenged Jefferson's view that Black people were intellectually inferior and pressed him to oppose slavery, turning the language of the Declaration of Independence back on its author. Jefferson replied politely, praising the work, and forwarded the almanac to the Marquis de Condorcet in Paris. The exchange was printed in the 1793 almanac.

Death and legacy

Banneker died in October 1806. On the day of his funeral his house burned down, destroying his clock and most of his papers; MacTutor suggests the fire was probably deliberate. The Library of Congress notes that his achievements directly challenged the false ideas about African Americans' abilities that were common in his day.