Benjamin Banneker
Benjamin Banneker was an American naturalist, mathematician, astronomer and almanac author. A landowner, he also worked as a surveyor and farmer.
Born in Baltimore County, Maryland, to a free African-American mother and a father who had formerly been enslaved, Banneker had little or no formal education and was largely self-taught. He became known for assisting Major Andrew Ellicott in a survey that established the original borders of the District of Columbia, the federal capital district of the United States.
Banneker's knowledge of astronomy helped him author a commercially successful series of almanacs. He corresponded with Thomas Jefferson on the topics of slavery and racial equality. Abolitionists and advocates of racial equality promoted and praised Banneker's works. Although a fire on the day of Banneker's funeral destroyed many of his papers and belongings, one of his journals and several of his remaining artifacts survived.
Banneker became a folk-hero after his death, leading to many accounts of his life being exaggerated or embellished. The names of parks, schools and streets commemorate him and his works, as do other tributes.
Biography
Early life
Banneker was born on November 9, 1731, in Baltimore County, Maryland, to Mary Banneky, a free black woman, and Robert, a freed slave from Guinea who died in 1759.There are two conflicting accounts of Banneker's family history. Banneker himself and his earliest biographers described him as having only African ancestry. None of Banneker's surviving papers describe a white ancestor or identify the name of his grandmother. However, two lines of later research both suggest that Banneker's mother was the daughter of a white woman and an African slave, although they differ as to whether the Banneker surname came from his mother or father and the origin of the name, which could be from Banaka, a small village in the present-day Klay District of Bomi County in northwestern Liberia that had once participated in the African slave trade or "Banaka", the home of the Vai people, who have lived there since about 1500 when they left the Mali Empire.
In 1737, when he was 6, Banneker was named on the deed of his family's farm in the Patapsco Valley in rural Baltimore County.
In 1791, a letter writer stated that Banneker's parents had sent him to an obscure school where he learned reading, writing and arithmetic as far as double position. In contrast, unverified accounts, first appeared in books published more than 140 years after Banneker's death suggest that, as a young teenager, Banneker met and befriended Peter Heinrich, a Quaker who later established a school near the Banneker family farm. These accounts state that Heinrich shared his personal library and provided Banneker with his only classroom instruction. Banneker's formal education presumably ended when he was old enough to help on his family's farm.
Notable works
Around 1753, at about the age of 21, Banneker reportedly completed a wooden clock that struck on the hour. He appears to have modelled his clock from a borrowed pocket watch by carving each piece to scale. The clock continued to work until his death.After his father died in 1759, Banneker lived with his mother and sisters. Records indicate that in 1768 and 1773, he was living in Baltimore.
In 1772, brothers Andrew Ellicott, John Ellicott and Joseph Ellicott moved from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and bought land along the Patapsco Falls near Banneker's farm on which to construct gristmills, around which the village of Ellicott's Mills subsequently developed. The Ellicotts were Quakers who held the same views on racial equality as did many of their faith. Banneker studied the mills and became acquainted with their proprietors. In 1788, George Ellicott, a son of Andrew Ellicott, loaned Banneker books and equipment to begin a more formal study of astronomy. During the following year, Banneker sent George his work calculating a solar eclipse.
In 1790, Banneker prepared an ephemeris for 1791, which he hoped would be placed within a published almanac. However, he was unable to find a printer that was willing to publish and distribute the work.
Survey of the original boundaries of the District of Columbia
In early 1791, U.S. Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, asked surveyor Maj. Andrew Ellicott to survey an area for a new federal district. In February 1791, Ellicott left a survey in western New York to begin the district survey and hired Banneker to assist him, advancing him $60 for travel expenses to, and at, Georgetown.The territory that became the original District of Columbia was formed from land along the Potomac River ceded by the states of Maryland and Virginia to the federal government. a square to measure 10 miles on each side, totaling 100 square miles. Ellicott's team placed boundary marker stones at or near every mile point along the borders of the new capital territory.
Banneker's role in the survey isn't entirely certain. Some biographers have stated that Banneker's duties consisted primarily of making astronomical observations and calculations to establish base points, including one at Jones Point in Alexandria, Virginia, where the survey started and where the south corner stone was to be located. They have also stated that Banneker maintained a clock that he used to relate points on the ground to the positions of stars at specific times.
However, there is little documentation to confirm Banneker's role and a news report covering the April 15 dedication ceremony for the first boundary stone credits Andrew Ellicott with "ascertain the precise point from which the first line of the district was to proceed" and did not mention Banneker.
Banneker left the boundary survey in April 1791 due to other commitments, particularly the calculation of an ephemeris for the year of 1792. The arrival of spring also required him to direct more attention to his farm than was needed during the winter. Banneker, therefore, returned to his home near Ellicott's Mills.
Andrew Ellicott's two younger brothers, who usually assisted him, had completed the New York survey about the same time and were able to join the survey of the federal district. The surveying team laid the remaining Virginia marker stones in 1791, laying the Maryland stones and completed the boundary survey in 1792.
Banneker's almanacs
After returning to Ellicott's Mills, Banneker made astronomical calculations that predicted eclipses and planetary conjunctions for inclusion in an almanac and ephemeris for the year of 1792. To aid Banneker in his efforts to have his almanac published, Andrew Ellicott forwarded Banneker's ephemeris to James Pemberton, the president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage.File:Charles Willson Peale - David Rittenhouse - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|right|upright=0.8|
Pemberton then asked William Waring, a Philadelphia mathematician and ephemeris calculator, and David Rittenhouse, a prominent American astronomer, almanac author, surveyor and scientific instrument maker who was at the time serving as the president of the American Philosophical Society, to confirm the accuracy of Banneker's work. Waring endorsed Banneker's work, stating, "I have examined Benjamin Banneker's Almanac for 1792, and am of the Opinion that it well deserves the Acceptance and Encouragement of the Public."
Rittenhouse responded to Pemberton by stating that Banneker's ephemeris "was a very extraordinary performance, considering the Colour of the Author" and that he "had no doubt that the Calculations are sufficiently accurate for the purposes of a common Almanac..... Every instance of Genius amongst the Negroes is worthy of attention, because their suppressors seem to lay great stress on their supposed inferior mental abilities." A biographer wrote that Banneker replied to Rittenhouse's endorsement by stating: "I am annoyed to find that the subject of my race is so much stressed. The work is either correct or it is not. In this case, I believe it to be perfect."
Pemberton then made arrangements for Joseph Crukshank to print Banneker's almanac. Having thus secured the support of Pemberton, Rittenhouse and Waring, Banneker delivered a manuscript containing his ephemeris to William Goddard, a Baltimore printer who had published The Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia Almanack and Ephemeris for every year since 1782. Goddard then agreed to print and distribute Banneker's work within an almanac and ephemeris for the year of 1792.
Banneker's Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia Almanack and Ephemeris, for the Year of our Lord, 1792 was the first in a six-year series of almanacs and ephemerides that printers agreed to publish and sell. At least 28 editions of the almanacs, some of which appeared during the same year, were printed in seven cities in five states: Baltimore; Philadelphia; Wilmington, Delaware; Alexandria, Virginia; Petersburg, Virginia; Richmond, Virginia; and Trenton, New Jersey.
The title pages of the Baltimore editions of Banneker's 1792, 1793 and 1794 almanacs and ephemerides stated that the publications contained:
the Motions of the Sun and Moon, the True Places and Aspects of the Planets, the Rising and Setting of the Sun, Place and Age of the Moon, &c. – The Lunations, Conjunctions, Eclipses, Judgment of the Weather, Festivals, and other remarkable Days; Days for holding the Supreme and Circuit Courts of the United States, as also the useful Courts in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. Also – several useful Tables, and valuable Receipts. – Various Selections from the Commonplace–Book of the Kentucky Philosopher, an American Sage; with interesting and entertaining Essays, in Prose and Verse –the whole comprising a greater, more pleasing, and useful Variety than any Work of the Kind and Price in North America.
In addition to the information that its title page described, the 1792 almanac contained a tide table listing the methods for calculating the time of high water at four locations along the Chesapeake Bay. Later almanacs contained tables for making such calculations for those locations as well as for Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Halifax, Quebec, Hatteras, Nantucket and other places. Monthly tables in each edition listed astronomical data and weather predictions for each of the months' dates.
A Philadelphia edition of Banneker's 1795 almanac contained a lengthy account of a yellow fever epidemic that had struck that city in 1793. Written by a committee whose president was the city's mayor, Matthew Clarkson, the account related the presumed origins and causes of the epidemic, as well as the extent and duration of the event.
The title pages of two Baltimore editions of Banneker's 1795 almanac had woodcut portraits of him as he may have appeared. However, a biographer later concluded that the portraits were more likely portrayals of an idealized African-American youth.
A Baltimore edition of Banneker's 1796 almanac contained a table enumerating the population of each U.S. state and the Southwest Territory as recorded in the 1790 United States census. The table listed the number of free persons and slaves in each state and the territory according to race and gender, as well as to whether they were above or below the age of 16 years. The table also listed the number of members of the U.S. House of Representatives that each state had during the almanac's year.
The almanacs' editors prefaced the publications with adulatory references to Banneker and his race. Editions of Banneker's 1792 and 1793 almanacs contained full or abridged copies of a lengthy commendatory letter that James McHenry, the Secretary of the 1787 United States Constitutional Convention and self-described friend of Banneker, had written to Goddard and his partner, James Angell, in August 1791 to support the almanac's publication.
As first published in Banneker's 1792 almanac and later given an increased circulation when re-published in Philadelphia within The American Museum, or Universal Magazine, McHenry's full letter began:
Benjamin Banneker, a free Negro, has calculated an Almanack, for the ensuing year, 1792, which being desirous to dispose of, to the best advantage, he has requested me to aid his application to you for that purpose. Having fully satisfied myself, in respect to his title to this type of authorship, if you can agree to him for the price of his work, I may venture to assure you it will do you credit, as Editors, while it will afford you the opportunity to encourage talents that have thus far surmounted the most discouraging circumstances and prejudices."
In their preface to Banneker's 1792 almanac, the editors of the work wrote that they:
feel themselves gratified in the Opportunity of presenting to the Public, through the Medium of their Press, what must be considered as an extraordinary Effort of Genius — a complete and accurate EPHEMERIS for the Year 1792, calculated by a sable Descendant of Africa,.... — They flatter themselves that a philanthropic Public, in this enlightened Era, will be induced to give their Patronage and Support to this Work, not only on Account of its intrinsic Merit, but from similar Motives to those which induced the Editors to give this Calculation the Preference, the ardent desire of drawing modest Merit from Obscurity, and controverting the long-established illiberal Prejudice against the Blacks.
After Goddard and Angell had published their 1792 Baltimore edition of the almanac, Angell wrote in the 1793 edition that abolitionists William Pitt, Charles James Fox and William Wilberforce had introduced the 1792 edition into the British House of Commons to aid their effort to end the British slave trade in Africa. However, the British Parliament's report of the debate that accompanied this effort did not mention either Banneker or his almanac.
Supported by Andrew, George and Elias Ellicott and heavily promoted by the Maryland and Pennsylvania abolition societies, the early editions of the almanacs achieved commercial success. Printers then distributed at least nine editions of Banneker's 1795 almanac. A Wilmington, Delaware, printer issued five editions for distribution by different vendors. Printers in Baltimore issued three versions of the almanac, while three Philadelphia printers also sold editions. A Trenton, New Jersey, printer additionally sold a version of the work.