February is Black History Month, so it’s a good time to learn about an important historical figure who was a farmer and almanac author as well as an inventor, scientist and surveyor.
His name is Benjamin Banneker, and he was very interested in astronomy, too. Banneker published a number of almanacs during his life, which farmers of the time used in order to know when to plant crops and when to expect good and bad weather.
Banneker was one of the first African Americans to gain distinction in science.
He was born in 1731 to a family of freed Black people and did not have to endure the cruel suffering of enslavement that other Blacks did during that time period.
According to biography.com, Banneker was born on Nov. 9, in Ellicott’s Mills, Maryland. Banneker was the son of an ex-slave named Robert and his wife, Mary Banneky. Banneker was taught to read by his maternal grandmother and for a very short time attended a small Quaker school. Other than that, he was largely self-educated.
One of Banneker’s early accomplishments included constructing an irrigation system for the family farm.
Banneker spent most of his life on his family’s 100-acre farm outside Baltimore. There, he taught himself astronomy by watching the stars and learned advanced mathematics from borrowed textbooks. In 1752, Banneker garnered public acclaim by building a clock entirely out of wood. The clock, believed to be the first built in America, kept precise time for decades.
With his astronomy knowledge, Banneker accurately forecasted lunar and solar eclipses. After his father’s passing, he ran his own farm for years, cultivating a business selling crops like tobacco.
Astronomy and Surveying
Banneker’s talents and intelligence eventually came to the attention of the local Ellicott family, entrepreneurs who had made a name and fortune by building a series of gristmills in the Baltimore area in the 1770s. George Ellicott had a large personal library and loaned Banneker numerous books on astronomy and other fields.
In 1791, Andrew Ellicott, George’s cousin, hired Banneker to assist in surveying territory for the nation’s capital city, now Washington, D.C. He worked in the observatory tent using a zenith sector to record the movement of the stars.
However, due to a sudden illness, Banneker was only able to work for Ellicott for about three months.
On Aug. 19, 1791, Banneker sent a copy of his first almanac to then-secretary of state Thomas Jefferson. In an accompanying letter, he questioned Jefferson’s sincerity as a “friend to liberty,” because Jefferson was a slaveholder. Banneker urged the future U.S. president to fight for the abolition (end) of slavery.
Popular Almanacs
Banneker’s true acclaim, however, came from his almanacs, which he published for six consecutive years during the later years of his life, between 1792 and 1797.
In 1789, Banneker began making astronomical calculations that enabled him to successfully forecast another solar eclipse. His estimate, made well in advance of the celestial event, contradicted predictions of better-known mathematicians and astronomers.
His almanacs included his own astronomical calculations as well as opinion pieces, literature and medical and tidal information, with the latter particularly useful to fishermen. Outside of his almanacs, Banneker also published information on bees and calculated the cycle of the 17-year locust.
He died in 1806.
