Benjamin Banneker | Letter to Jefferson, Clock, Almanac, & Facts | Britannica

Benjamin Banneker (born November 9, 1731, Banneky farm [now in Oella], Maryland [U.S.]—died October 19? [see Researcher’s Note], 1806, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.) was a mathematician, astronomer, compiler of almanacs, inventor, and writer, one of the first important African American intellectuals.

Banneker, a freeman, was raised on a farm near Baltimore that he would eventually inherit from his father. Although he periodically attended a one-room Quaker schoolhouse, Banneker was largely self-educated and did much of his learning through the voracious reading of borrowed books. Early on he demonstrated a particular facility for mathematics. While still a young man (probably about age 20), he built a wooden clock that kept precise time. Banneker was encouraged in the study of astronomy by George Ellicott, a Quaker and amateur astronomer whose family owned nearby mills. As early as 1788, Banneker began to make astronomical calculations, and he accurately predicted a solar eclipse that occurred in 1789. In 1791, while working with Andrew Ellicott and others in surveying the land that would become Washington, D.C., Banneker made other astronomical observations.

As an essayist and pamphleteer, Banneker opposed slavery and advocated civil rights. In 1791 he sent Thomas Jefferson, then U.S. secretary of state, a letter asking Jefferson’s aid in bringing about better conditions for African Americans. With the letter, Banneker also sent a handwritten copy of the manuscript for his 1792 Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia Almanack and Ephemeris, which he continued to publish annually through 1797.

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