Бенджамин Баннекер: Учёный, землемер и автор альманахов из свободных афроамериканцев.

Free African American scientist, surveyor, almanac author and farmer

Benjamin Banneker (November 9, 1731October 19, 1806) was an African 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.

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. The first published description of Molly Welsh was based on interviews with her descendants that took place in 1836, long after the deaths of both Molly and Benjamin. According to that story, Molly purchased Banneka to help establish a farm located near the future site of Ellicott's Mills, Maryland, west of Baltimore. Molly supposedly freed and married Banneka, who may have shared his knowledge of astronomy with her. The biographer suggested that Benjamin acquired this knowledge from Molly, as Benjamin was born after Banneka's death. A 2021 update to this genealogy stated that Benjamin Banneker's father, Robert, was by May 18, 1731, married to Mary Lett (then called Mary Beneca), the daughter of a white woman by an enslaved man. The update noted that Banaka is the home of the Vai people, who have lived there since about 1500 when they left the Mali Empire. In 1737, Banneker was named at the age of 6 on the deed of his family's farm in the Patapsco Valley in rural Baltimore County. A letter writer stated in 1791 that Banneker's parents had sent him to an obscure school where he learned reading, writing and arithmetic as far as double position. However, the remainder of Banneker's early life is not well documented. Unverified accounts that first appeared in books published more than 140 years after Banneker's death relate that, as a young teenager, Banneker met and befriended Peter Heinrich, a Quaker who later established a school near the Banneker family farm. (Quakers were leaders in the anti slavery movement and advocates of racial equality (see Quakers in the abolition movement and Testimony of equality)). These accounts state that Heinrich shared his personal library and provided Banneker with his only classroom instruction. Banneker's formal education (if any) presumably ended when he was old enough to help on his family's farm.

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. An entry for his property in a 1773 Baltimore County tax list identified Banneker as the only adult member of his household. 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 (now Ellicott City) 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. During the following year, Banneker sent George his work calculating a solar eclipse. However, he was unable to find a printer that was willing to publish and distribute the work.

In early 1791, U. S. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson asked surveyor Major Andrew Ellicott (a son of Joseph Ellicott and a cousin of George Ellicott) to survey an area that would contain a new federal district. In February 1791, Ellicott left a surveying team that he had been leading in western New York so that he could begin the district's survey. Ellicott then hired Banneker as a replacement to assist in the initial survey of the federal district's boundaries, 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 that the states of Maryland and Virginia ceded to the federal government of the United States in accordance with the 1790 federal Residence Act and later legislation. The territory was a square that measured 10 mile (16 km) on each side, totaling 100 square miles (259 km2) (see: Founding of Washington, D. C.). Ellicott's team placed boundary marker stones at or near every mile point along the borders of the new capital territory (see: Boundary markers of the original District of Columbia). 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. An April 21, 1791, news report of the April 15 dedication ceremony for the first boundary stone (the south corner stone) stated that it was Andrew Ellicott who "ascertained the precise point from which the first line of the district was to proceed". The news report did not mention Banneker's name. Banneker left the boundary survey in April 1791 within three months of its initiation because the time that he was devoting to the project was conflicting with the time that he had expected to use to calculate an ephemeris for the year of 1792. Further, the arrival of spring required him to direct more attention to his farm than was needed during the winter.

Banneker kept a series of journals that contained his notebooks for astronomical observations, his diary and accounts of his dreams. The journals, only one of which escaped a fire on the day of his funeral, additionally contained a number of mathematical calculations and puzzles. The surviving journal described in April 1800 Banneker's recollections of the 1749, 1766 and 1783 emergences of Brood X of the seventeen year periodical cicada (Magicicada septendecim and related species) and stated, " they may be expected again in they year 1800 which is Seventeen Since their third appearance to me." Describing an effect that the pathogenic fungus, Massospora cicadina, has on its host, the journal further stated that the insects: begin to Sing or make a noise from first they come out of the Earth till they die. The hindermost part rots off, and it does not appear to be any pain to them, for they still continue on Singing till they die. The journal also recorded Banneker's observations on the hives and behavior of honey bees.

Banneker's 1792 almanac contained an extract from an anonymous essay entitled "On Negro Slavery, and the Slave Trade" that the Columbian Magazine had published in 1790. After quoting a statement that David Rittenhouse had made (that Negroes "have been doomed to endless slavery by us — merely because their bodies have been disposed to reflect or absorb the rays of light in a way different from ours"), the extract concluded:The time, it is hoped is not very remote, when those ill fated people, dwelling in this land of freedom, shall commence a participation with the white inhabitants, in the blessings of liberty; and experience the kindly protection of government, for the essential rights of human nature. A Philadelphia edition of Banneker's 1793 almanac that Joseph Crukshank published contained copies of pleas for peace that the English anti slavery poet William Cowper and others had authored, as well as anti slavery speeches and writings from England and America. The latter included extracts from speeches that William Pitt, Matthew Montagu and Charles James Fox had given to the British House of Commons in 1792 during the debate on a motion for the abolition of the British slave trade, an extract from a 1789 poem by an English Quaker, Thomas Wilkinson, and an extract from a query in Thomas Jefferson's 1787 Notes on the State of Virginia. Although the almanac did not identify the Plan's author, writers later attributed the work to Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the 1776 Declaration of Independence. The Plan proposed the appointment of a "Secretary of Peace", described the Secretary's powers and advocated federal support and promotion of the Christian religion. The Plan stated:
I. Let a Secretary of Peace be appointed to preside in this office; ; let him be a genuine republican and a sincere Christian,

II. Let a power be given to the Secretary to establish and maintain free schools in every city, village and township in the United States; Let the youth of our country be instructed in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and in the doctrines of a religion of some kind; the Christian religion should be preferred to all others; for it belongs to this religion exclusively to teach us not only to cultivate peace with all men, but to forgive—nay more, to love our very enemies. III. Let every family be furnished at public expense, by the Secretary of this office, with an American edition of the Bible. IV. Let the following sentence be inscribed in letters of gold over the door of every home in the United States: THE SON OF MAN CAME INTO THE WORLD, NOT TO DESTROY MEN'S LIVES, BUT TO SAVE THEM. V. To inspire a veneration for human life, and a horror at the shedding of human blood, let all those laws be repealed which authorise juries, judges, sheriffs, or hangmen to assume the resentments of individuals, and to commit murder in cold blood in any case whatever. VI. To subdue that passion for war, militia laws should everywhere be repealed, and military dresses and military titles should be laid aside.

On the day of his funeral in 1806, a fire burned Banneker's log cabin to the ground, destroying many of his belongings and papers. In 1813, William Goodard, who had published the Baltimore edition of Banneker's 1792 almanac (Banneker's first published almanac), donated the manuscript for the almanac to the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston holds in its collections the August 17, 1791, handwritten letter that Banneker sent to Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson endorsed the letter as received on August 21, 1791. The Library of Congress holds a copy of Jefferson's August 30, 1791, handwritten reply to Banneker. Jefferson produced this document on a letter copying press made by James Watt & Co. that he used before he sent his reply to Banneker. He retained the copy in his files. The Library of Congress also holds a copy of Jefferson's August 30, 1791, handwritten letter to the Marquis de Condorcet that described Banneker's race, abilities, almanac and work with Andrew Ellicott. The Library of Congress holds a handwritten duplicate of Jefferson's letter to the Marquis de Condorcet. The pagination in the duplicate differs from that in the copy that Jefferson produced on his copying press. The Library attributes the duplicate to Jefferson. The Princeton University Library holds within its Straus Autograph Collection the recipient's copy of the handwritten letter that Jefferson sent to Joel Barlow in 1809. Jefferson's letter cited the letter that Banneker had sent to him in 1791. Barlow endorsed Jefferson's letter after he received it. The Library of Congress holds a copy of Jefferson's 1809 letter to Joel Barlow that Jefferson had retained in his files after sending his handwritten letter to Barlow. In 1987, a member of the Ellicott family, which had retained Banneker's only remaining journal, donated that document and other Banneker manuscripts to the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore. The family also retained several items that Banneker had used after borrowing them from George Ellicott, as well as some that Banneker himself had owned. In 1996, a descendant of George Ellicott decided to sell at auction some of those items, including a drop leaf table, candlesticks, candle molds, maps, letters and diaries. Although supporters of the planned Benjamin Banneker Historical Park and Museum in Oella, Maryland, had hoped to obtain these and several other items related to Banneker and the Ellicotts, a Virginia investment banker won most of the items with a series of bids that totaled $85,000. The purchaser stated that he expected to keep some of the items and to donate the rest to the planned African American Civil War Memorial museum in Washington, D. C.

In 1997, it was announced that the artifacts would initially be exhibited in the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C., and then loaned to the Banneker Douglass Museum in Annapolis, Maryland. After completion of the Benjamin Banneker Historical Park and Museum in Oella, the artifacts would be loaned to that facility for a period of twenty years. The Oella museum displayed the table, candle molds and candlesticks after it opened in 1998.

A substantial mythology exaggerating Banneker's accomplishments has developed during the two centuries that have elapsed since his death, becoming a part of African American culture. Others involve his clock, his astronomical works, his almanacs and his journals. A United States postage stamp and the names of a number of recreational and cultural facilities, schools, streets, and other facilities and institutions throughout the United States have commemorated Banneker's documented and mythical accomplishments throughout the years since he lived. In 1983, Rita Dove, a future Poet Laureate of the United States, wrote a biographical poem about Banneker while on the faculty of Arizona State University.