Benjamin Banneker

His name went onto the deed of a 100-acre farm in the Patapsco Valley when he was six, in 1737, which made a free Black child a landowner. What schooling followed was slight. A letter writer in 1791 said his parents had sent him to an obscure school where he got as far as double position in arithmetic, and the warmer story of a Quaker neighbor opening a private library to him first appears in books published more than 140 years after he died. What is documented is the farm and a clock. Around 1753 he built a wooden timepiece that struck the hours, apparently copying a borrowed pocket watch part by part, and it ran until he died. Then in 1772 the Ellicott brothers put gristmills up the road.

George Ellicott lent him books and instruments, and in February 1791 Andrew Ellicott advanced him 60 dollars to come down to Georgetown and help fix the corners of the new federal district. He was gone again by April, back at the ephemeris tables, because spring wanted his attention and so did the year 1792. Six annual almanacs followed, sold from Wilmington to Trenton, along with one letter to a sitting secretary of state that has outlasted every calculation in them. BriefHistory carries that public record. What is left over is the man at the table with the candle.

Jefferson replied within eleven days, courteously, and sent the almanac on to Condorcet in Paris as a document to which, he wrote, Banneker's whole colour had a right. Eighteen years later, with Banneker three years dead, Jefferson wrote to Joel Barlow that the man had spherical trigonometry enough to make almanacs but not without the suspicion of aid from Ellicott, and that his letter showed a mind of very common stature indeed. His own printers introduced him to readers as an extraordinary effort of genius by a sable descendant of Africa, evidence in an argument other men were conducting. He published his last almanac for 1797, sold off much of his land, and drank. The drinking was chronic, it worsened as he aged, and it may have contributed to his death.

A fire took the log cabin on the day of his funeral in 1806 and burned every journal but one. The grave stayed unmarked until 1977, when the state raised an obelisk at Mount Gilboa church in Oella. The surviving journal stayed with the Ellicott family until 1987, when they gave it to the Maryland Historical Society. Meanwhile the story outran the evidence: that his clock was the first made in America, that he reproduced L'Enfant's plan of Washington from memory after the Frenchman quit. Silvio Bedini of the Smithsonian spent 40 years separating the two. Rita Dove wrote him a poem in 1983. A statue of him stands in the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Benjamin Banneker's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Wooden striking clock invention
  Carved by hand, apparently modelled on a borrowed pocket watch 1753
• Boundary survey of the District of Columbia mission
  Hired by Andrew Ellicott in February, back on the farm by April 1791
• Letter to Thomas Jefferson article
  Printed as a pamphlet with Jefferson's reply and reprinted widely 1791
• Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia Almanack and Ephemeris for 1792 book
  His first published almanac, printed in Baltimore by William Goddard 1791
• Almanac for 1796 book
  Carried a table of the 1790 census by state, free and enslaved 1795
• The surviving journal book
  Records the 1749, 1766 and 1783 emergences of the 17-year cicada 1800

• November 9, 1731 aged 0 Born free in Baltimore County, Maryland His mother Mary was free, his father Robert a freed man from Guinea.
• 1737 aged ~6 Named at six on the deed to the family's 100-acre farm
• c. 1753 aged ~22 Builds a wooden clock that strikes the hours The main account puts him at about 21. The earliest surviving account, from 1845, puts him near 30.
• 1759 aged ~28 His father dies and he stays on the farm with his mother and sisters
• 1772 aged ~41 The Ellicott brothers build gristmills beside his land He studied the mills and got to know their Quaker owners, who lent him books and instruments.
• February 1791 aged 59 Andrew Ellicott advances him 60 dollars to help survey the federal district
• August 19, 1791 aged 59 Writes to Thomas Jefferson about the Declaration and slavery Jefferson answered on August 30 and forwarded the almanac to Condorcet in Paris.
• 1792 aged ~61 His first almanac is published in Baltimore
• October 19, 1806 aged 74 Dies at 74, and a fire destroys his cabin on the day of the funeral

• Thomas Jefferson 1743–1826
  Principal author of the Declaration of Independence and third President who oversaw the Louisiana Purchase. challenged
• Frederick Douglass 1818–1895
  Former slave who became a leading abolitionist, orator, and advocate for equal rights. carried the argument forward
• George Washington Carver 1864–1943
  Agricultural scientist whose research on crop rotation and alternative crops transformed Southern farming. later self-taught scientist
• W.E.B. Du Bois 1868–1963
  Sociologist, historian, and civil rights activist who was the first African American to earn a Harvard doctorate. claimed him as evidence
• Booker T. Washington 1856–1915
  Educator and founder of Tuskegee Institute who advocated for vocational training for African Americans. inherited the same argument