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Benjamin Banneker
| Article
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20132 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1992 |
2,069 Words |
| Author
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Peggy Robbins
Peggy Robbins, a Tennessee native, is a free-lance writer
living in Gulfport, Mississippi. Over the past three decades,
she has written extensively about American heritage and
military history. |
Self-educated inventor-physicist-astronomer-mathematician-writer Benjamin Banneker was long neglected in American history. Even today many historians of the District of Columbia refer to a white man, Andrew Ellicott, as "the man who saved Washington"--a white man who always declared that it was an achievement of his gentle black friend, Benjamin Banneker.
Born in November 1731 in the backwoods of Maryland Colony, Banneker was the grandson of white Englishwoman Molly Welsh, who came to America as an indentured servant, and an African slave named Bannaka, who was the son of a tribal king. After Molly's seven years of service, she managed to acquire a small farm in the Patapsco River Valley near Baltimore and two male slaves, just arrived from Africa, to help her work it. She freed both slaves and married one, Bannaka, an intelligent, capable young man. Bannaka's name was anglicized to Banneker.
The couple's oldest child, Mary, married a slave whom Molly had bought from a slave ship, freed, and given the Christian name Robert. Robert, who had no last name, assumed his wife's maiden name. He spoke no English until his wife taught him a few words, but he was knowledgeable about farming methods never before used in the Patapsco Valley, particularly irrigation procedures. Many and Robert and their only son, Benjamin, moved when the boy was six from her parents' farm to a chbin on a piece of land they had bought not far from the elder Bannekers. That was the place Benjamin called "home" the rest of his life.
A quite boy who kept to himself, Benjamin willingly worked on the farm. He had been taught to read by his grandmother, and he read every book of every kind that he could get. All books were difficult for him to acquire, so even with Molly's help, the knowledge he gained was quite varied. But he did develop a particular interest in the sciences, including mathematics and philosophy. When he was about ten he was admitted to a Quaker school in a small community within walking distance of his home. The only black among the dozen students, he probably was admitted because, earlier, he had given Peter Heinrich, who ran the school in his barn, valuable information about designing irrigation ditches.
The school, which began late each year after the tobacco had been cut and ran until spring, taught practical subjects, most of them related to farming. Benjamin enjoyed every minute of it; even more he enjoyed the books on other subjects that Heinrich loaned him. He attended the school until he was fifteen; by then, neither
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