Life Path of Benjamin Banneker - Research Paper Example

Benjamin Banneker In the era of the revolution, Benjamin Banneker of Maryland -- astronomer, mathematician, and defender of black dignity against the aspersions of Thomas Jefferson-was a primary symbol of the self-evident truth that all men are created equal. Banneker achieved transatlantic fame. He was born November 9, 1731 in Baltimore County. In Paris, his name and work would be cited by the revolutionary Abbé Henri Grégoire. In London, Pitt, Fox, and Wilberforce would flourish his almanac in the House of Commons while the benches rang "with much Applause." (Allen & Murray, 125) Yet Jefferson never really forgave the sable scientist for speaking out. Who in this historic encounter finally emerged as the finer champion of the cause of humanity may be clarified in the following notes. A few pages must suffice to sketch in the first fifty years of Banneker's rich but simple life. In 1683 an English dairymaid named Molly Welsh, falsely accused of pilfering a bucket of milk, found herself part of a cargo of convicts and was sold as an indentured servant to a tobacco farmer on the Patapsco River in tidewater Maryland. After working out her seven years, she rented some land on the nearby frontier and farmed it alone for a number of years. Then, "from a ship anchored in the Bay," she purchased two African slaves. (Shirley, 110) One, who had the name of Bannke or Bannaka, said he was the son of a chief, never gave up his African religion, and is described in tradition as "a man of bright intelligence, fine temper, with a very agreeable presence, dignified manners, and contemplative habits." (Sidney, 98) A few years later, Molly Welsh liberated both her slaves, and -- despite the laws against miscegenation -- took Bannaka for her husband. Mary, one of the daughters of this marriage, married a man from Guinea, the slave of a neighboring planter who had baptized him Robert and then set him free. Robert took the name of Banneky, or Banneker. The free Bannekers were an unusual family in Baltimore County, where fifteen years later there were, roughly, only two hundred free blacks in a population of four thousand slaves and thirteen thousand whites. Benjamin's grandmother Molly Welsh taught him, via the Bible, to read and write and sent him for a while to a one-room, interracial school presided over by a Quaker master. A black classmate recalled that young Benjamin was not fond of play -- "all his delight was to dive into his books." He grew up a farm boy grumbling at his share of the chores, but even then he displayed an interest in things mechanical and mathematical, long before he fell in love with the stars. The elaborate process of tobacco production fascinated the lad -- he once tallied the number of steps in the operation -- thirty-six from seed to cigar. When he was twenty-two, Benjamin took it into his head to make with his own hands a clock that would strike the hours. His tools were primitive and up to this time he had never seen a book on the subject, perhaps not even a clock. "This first scientific achievement", writes Silvio A. Bedini in his biography of Banneker, "was associated with a theme that preoccupied him during the major part of his life. He was twenty-eight when his father died and willed him the farm, and for the next decade he lived alone with his mother. He was a good farmer, owned two horses and a few cows, sold honey from his beehives, cultivated a large garden for table and sale, and raised wheat and corn for his own use.” (Silvio, 87) Tobacco was his main market crop. He bought a book now and then when he could -- a quarto Bible in 1763. He was the proud possessor of a flute, a violin, and some music books. He loved to devise mathematical puzzles, sometimes in verse. Now and then his neighbors came to marvel at his clock or to ask for help in arithmetic and letter writing. He favored the Quakers but never formally became a Friend. In 1772 two brothers named Ellicott came to the valley and in a few years built a complex of well-designed grist mills, which became the focus of a busy settlement with a post office and a general store. Banneker, now in his early forties, closely observed all the work -- the details of construction, the semi-automated operation that converted wagons of grain into sacks of flour -- and his farm helped supply food for the laborers. The black farmer got to know the Ellicotts and on his visits to the store there was palaver about politics and other matters. Banneker was restrained in his manner, but "when he could be prevailed upon to set this reserve aside," those within earshot discovered that he had "a great store of traditional lore which he had gathered from listening to others and particularly from the books he had read," and that he could tell "anecdotes which fitted the current subject under discussion." One of his favorite topics was "the history of the early settlement of the North American continent" -- no doubt he pondered the role of the kidnapped Africans in that history. Occasionally he would talk about his own life and his struggle for knowledge. He was a regular reader of the Maryland Gazette and the Baltimore Advertiser, two newspapers he could find in the Ellicott store. Although Congress met briefly in Baltimore in 1776, the war touched the county only slightly -- the Quakerish Banneker, in his late forties, physically not at all. By the spring of 1781 free blacks were subject to the draft and the idea of a regiment of slaves was discarded only because Maryland law-makers felt that the blacks were needed for production and that it was risky to put guns in their hands. The Ellicotts went to war and the mills suffered, especially from floods, but when they returned they rebuilt better than before. Banneker's best friend among the Ellicotts was young George, almost thirty years his junior, an enthusiast of science and especially astronomy, who had imported from London a collection of texts, instruments, and globes. George Ellicott was "one of the best mathematicians, and also one of the finest amateur astronomers of the time," wrote his daughter Martha, "and was fond of imparting instruction to every youthful inquirer after knowledge who came to his house. (Martha , 54) As early as the year 1782, during the fine clear evenings of autumn, he was in the habit of giving gratuitous lessons on astronomy to any of the inhabitants of the village who wished to hear him. To many of these, his celestial globe was “an object of great interest and curiosity.” (Marion, 102) Banneker became intoxicated with astronomy. Using his logarithmic tables, Banneker ambitiously attempted a projection of an eclipse of the sun and sent the results to Ellicott, who found a trifling error but was amazed at the feat, for he had given Banneker no instruction on the procedure to be used. When Banneker learned of his error, he was chagrined and went over his work. The fault, he found to his joy, was not his, but had stemmed from a disparity in two of his sources, the leading English authorities on astronomy, A colonial institution as early as 1639, the almanac was a popular compendium of practical data -- astronomical, meteorological, medical, agricultural, and almost everything else -- seasoned with proverb, poem, and jest. (Martha , 54) The heart of the almanac was the ephemeris, calculated by the astronomer, as Bedini explains that from a series of basic computations required to establish the positions of the sun, moon and planets each year, from which other calculations may be made: the solar and lunar eclipses, the times of rising and setting of the sun and moon, identification of remarkable days, weather forecasting on a daily basis, tide tables for the region, and similar data. From the Declaration of Independence to the inauguration of George Washington, eight cities had furnished sites for the meetings of Congress. It was time to establish a national capital. During the winter of 1791, the president appointed Major Andrew Ellicott to survey the district chosen for the new federal city on the Potomac that would later be known as the District of Columbia. When the major asked George Ellicott to serve as his "scientific assistant," George strongly recommended the sixty-year-old Banneker for the position. (Herbert, 25) The major, who had seen Banneker's ephemeris, knew that he was qualified, and Thomas Jefferson, the secretary of state, approved the appointment. In early February they reached Alexandria and went on to Georgetown to begin their task. Banneker worked closely with Ellicott, kept notes on the progress of the survey, made the necessary calculations, and handled the astronomical instruments for establishing the base points. Banneker, in fact, spent most of his time in the observatory tent, where he also slept. It was only after Ellicott and his black "scientific assistant" were well under way in the survey that Jefferson appointed Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant to prepare drawings of the site and of specific government buildings. Whenever Banneker had time, he labored on his ephemeris for the coming year. At the end of April, when the major's two brothers arrived to assist him, Banneker was not sorry to start for home. He had learned something about practical astronomy from Major Ellicott and he was eager to resume full-time work on his calculations. And there was the farm. Elizabeth remembered the day he got back. "On his return home, he called at the house of his friend George Ellicott to give an account of his engagements. He arrived on horseback, dressed in his usual costume, a full suit of drab cloth, surmounted by a large beaver hat." (Mulcrone, 32) He was in fine spirits, seeming to have been reanimated by the kindness of the distinguished men with whom he had mingled. With his usual humility he estimated his own services at a low rate. Benjamin Banneker published six almanacs, for the years 1792 to 1797, in twenty-eight editions, printed in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Petersburg, Richmond, Wilmington, and Trenton. The achievement was a notable one for at least two reasons: it was a scientific feat by a self-taught polymath in his sixties; it was a bold polemic aimed at those who denied equal intellect and humanity in black and white. It was in 1788 that the American edition of his Notes on the State of Virginia was published in Philadelphia. It is hardly possible that the Ellicotts did not own a copy of the book and more than probable that Banneker, either directly or through the press, was painfully aware of its slurs on the intellectual capacities of the blacks. In Georgetown, in the Weekly Ledger, Banneker had already seen himself cited as "an Ethiopian" who was the living rebuttal of Mr. Jefferson's opinion that blacks were "void of mental endowments." (Henry, 112) Now, back home in Maryland, his historic task was clear. Banneker's Almanacs would drive the point home. When the ephemeris for 1792 was at last ready for the press, he quickly lined up a few printers in Georgetown and Baltimore, but his particular wish was to publish it in Philadelphia, where the stalwarts of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery – already aware of his work -- saw eye to eye with his concept of an almanac that would combine scientific data with antiracist argument. Everything went well, the ubiquitous Ellicotts assisting. It was during the summer of 1791, that Benjamin Banneker, feeling that the time was now ripe for spelling out his grand idea, wrote to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson a letter that deserves to be enshrined as a classic document of our literature -- the black democratic challenge put to the chief ideologist of the American Revolution. Banneker never married, lived alone on his farm, and cooked his own meals. As his infirmities increased, he sold and rented parts of his land, then gave the rest of it to the Ellicotts in exchange for a twelve-pound annuity guaranteed for his life. He puttered in his garden and orchard, watched the stars at night, went to sleep at dawn, studied his bees endlessly, made original observations on the seventeen-year locusts, hunted a bit, sat under his chestnut tree in the dooryard and played his violin and flute, drank a little too much at times, attended Quaker meetings now and then. The journal that he always kept was not abandoned. In its pages he recorded his observations of nature, new mathematical puzzles in verse, his dreams, and the continuing calculations for new ephemerides that were never published. About Banneker in his old age there was the aura of a sage. All who knew him at this time remembered his very venerable and dignified appearance. Works Cited Henry E. Baker, "Benjamin Banneker, the Negro Mathematician and Astronomer", JNH 3 (1918): 99-118; Herbert Aptheker , ed., A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States ( New York, 1951), 1:23-26 Marion Barber Stowell , Early American Almanacs ( New York, 1977), 102-3. Martha E. Tyson, A Sketch of the Life of Benjamin Banneker (Baltimore, 1854) Mulcrone T. F., "Benjamin Banneker, Pioneer Negro Mathematician", Mathematics Teacher 68 (Jan. 1961): 32 Shirley Graham, Your Most Humble Servant: The Story of Benjamin Banneker (New York, 1949) Sidney Kaplan, "Dr. Benjamin Rush's Plea for Universal Peace", Massachusetts Review 25 (Summer 1984): 270-84. Silvio A. Bedini, The Life of Benjamin Banneker (New York, 1972) Will W. Allen and Daniel Murray, Banneker, The Afric-American Astronomer (Washington, 1921) Read More