Global InformationBenjamin Banneker information
 | This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: over 50 citation errors and overly detailed quotes in references. (August 2023) |
Benjamin Banneker | |
|---|---|
 Library of Congress Banneker depicted in a 1943 mural by Maxine Merlino in the Recorder of Deeds Building in Washington, D.C. (2010)[1] | |
| Born | November 9, 1731 Baltimore County, Province of Maryland, British America |
| Died | October 19, 1806 (aged 74) Oella, Baltimore County, Maryland, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Other names | Benjamin Bannaker |
| Occupation(s) | almanac author, surveyor, farmer |
| Parents |
|
Benjamin Banneker (November 9, 1731 – October 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.[2] The names of parks, schools and streets commemorate him and his works, as do other tributes.
- ^ (1) Cropped image extracted from Highsmith, Carol M. (photographer). ""Benjamin Banneker: Surveyor-Inventor-Astronomer", mural by Maxime Seelbinder, at the Recorder of Deeds building, built in 1943. 515 D St., NW, Washington, D.C." (photograph). Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress. Archived from the original on November 1, 2017. Retrieved November 5, 2017.
(2) "Recorder of Deeds Building: Seelbinder Mural – Washington DC". The Living New Deal. Archived from the original on January 11, 2020. Retrieved January 11, 2020..
(3) Norfleet, Nicole (March 11, 2010). "D.C. Recorder of Deeds moving but fate of murals unclear". The Washington Post. Washington, D.C. Archived from the original on October 3, 2016. Retrieved October 3, 2016.
(4) Sefton, D. P., DC Preservation League, Washington, D.C. (July 1, 2010). "National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Recorder of Deeds Building" (PDF). Washington, D.C: District of Columbia Office of Planning. pp. 18–19. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 5, 2016. Retrieved October 3, 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ (1) Whiteman, Maxwell. "BENJAMIN BANNEKER: Surveyor and Astronomer: 1731–1806: A biographical note". In Whiteman, Maxwell (ed.). Banneker's Almanack and Ephemeris for the Year of Our Lord 1793; being The First After Bisixtile or Leap Year and Banneker's almanac, for the year 1795: Being the Third After Leap Year: Afro-American History Series: Rhistoric Publication No. 202. Rhistoric publications (1969 Reprint ed.). Rhistoric Publications, a division of Microsurance Inc. LCCN 72077039. OCLC 907004619. Retrieved June 14, 2017 – via HathiTrust Digital Library.
A number of fictional accounts of Banneker are available. All of them were dependent upon the following: Proceedings of the Maryland Historical Society for 1837 and 1854 which respectively contain the accounts of Banneker by John B. H. Latrobe and Martha E. Tyson. They were subsequently reprinted as pamphlets.
(2) Bedini, 1969, p. 7. "The name of Benjamin Banneker, the Afro-American self-taught mathematician and almanac-maker, occurs again and again in the several published accounts of the survey of Washington City [D.C.] begun in 1791, but with conflicting reports of the role which he played. Writers have implied a wide range of involvement, from the keeper of horses or supervisor of the woodcutters, to the full responsibility of not only the survey of the ten-mile square but the design of the city as well. None of these accounts has described the contribution which Banneker actually made."
(3) Bedini, 1972, p. 126. "Benjamin Banneker's name does not appear on any of the contemporary documents or records relating to the selection, planning, and survey of the City of Washington. An exhaustive search of the files under Public Buildings and Grounds in the U.S. National Archives and of the several collections in the Library of Congress have proved fruitless. A careful perusal of all known surviving correspondence and papers of Andrew Ellicott and of Pierre Charles L'Enfant has likewise failed to reveal mention of Banneker. This conclusively dispels the legend that after L'Enfant's dismissal and his refusal to make available his plan of the city, Ellicott was able to reconstruct it in detail from Banneker's recollection. Equally untrue are legends that Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State invited Banneker to luncheon at the White House. Jefferson during this period was in Philadelphia, the national capital had not yet been built, and there was no White House.”
(4) Bedini, 1972, p. 186. "Another important item in the 1793 almanac was "A Plan Of a Peace-Office for the United States," which aroused a good deal of comment at the time. It was believed by many to have been Banneker's own work. Even within recent decades its authorship has been debated. In 1947 it was identified without question as the work of Dr. Benjamin Rush, in a volume of his writings that appeared in that year."
(5) Bedini, 1972, p. 403, Item 85 "William Loren Katz. Eyewitness, the Negro in American History. New York. Putnam Publishing Corp., 1967 pp. 19–31, 61–62.
Brief account of Banneker's career and contributions, which are stated to have been in "the fields of science, mathematics, and political affairs," illustrated with the fictional portrait from Allen's work (item 56) and the cover page of the almanac for 1793. Among the misstatements are the claims that Banneker produced the first clock made entirely with American parts, that Jefferson promised Banneker that he would end slavery, that George Ellicott worked with Banneker in the survey of Washington, that Banneker was appointed to the Commission at a suggestion made by Jefferson to Washington, and that Banneker selected the sites of the principal buildings. The fiction that Banneker re-created L'Enfant's plan from memory is again presented, and his almanacs are said to have been published for a period of ten years."
(6) Boyd, Julian P., ed. (1974). "Locating the Federal District: Editorial Note: Footnote number 119". The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: 24 January–31 March 1791. Vol. 19. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. pp. 41–43. ISBN 9780691185255. LCCN 50007486. OCLC 1045069058. Retrieved March 27, 2019 – via Google Books.Recent biographical accounts of Benjamin Banneker (1731–1806), a mulatto whose father was a native African and whose grandmother was English, have done his memory a disservice by obscuring his real achievements under a cloud of extravagant claims to scientific accomplishment that have no foundation in fact. The single notable exception is Silvio A. Bedini's The Life of Benjamin Banneker (New York, 1972), a work of painstaking research and scrupulous attention to accuracy which also benefits from the author's discovery of important and hitherto unavailable manuscript sources. However, as Bedini points out, the story of Banneker's involvement in the survey of the Federal District "rests on extremely meager documentation" (p. 104). This consists of a single mention by TJ, two brief statements by Banneker himself, and the newspaper allusion quoted above. In consequence, Bedini's otherwise reliable biography accepts the version of Banneker's role in this episode as presented in reminiscences of nineteenth-century authors. These recollections, deriving in large part from members of the Ellicott family, who were prompted by Quaker inclinations to justice and equality, have compounded the confusion. The nature of TJ's connection with Banneker is treated in the Editorial Note to the group of documents under 30 Aug. 1791, but because of the obscured record it is necessary here to attempt a clarification of the role of this modest, self-taught tobacco farmer in the laying out of the national capital.
First of all, because of unwarranted claims to the contrary, it must be pointed out that there is no evidence whatever that Banneker had anything to do with the survey of the Federal City or indeed with the final establishment of the boundaries of the Federal District. All available testimony shows that he was present only during the few weeks early in 1791 when the rough preliminary survey of the ten mile square was made; that, after this was concluded and before the final survey was begun, he returned to his farm and his astronomical studies in April, accompanying Ellicott part way on his brief journey back to Philadelphia; and that thenceforth he had no connection with the mapping of the seat of government. ...
In any case, Banneker's participation in the surveying of the Federal District was unquestionably brief and his role uncertain.
(7) Martel, Erich (February 20, 1994). "The Egyptian Illusion". Opinions. The Washington Post. Archived from the original on September 18, 2018. Retrieved September 17, 2018.Teachers who want reliable information on African American history often don't know where to turn. Many have unfortunately looked to unreliable books and publications by Afrocentric writers. The African American Baseline Essays, developed by the public school system in Portland, Ore., are the most widespread Afrocentric teaching material. Educators should be aware of their crippling flaws. ....
"Thomas Jefferson appointed Benjamin Banneker to survey the site for the capital, Washington, D.C.; ...." according to the essay on African American scientists.
Had the author consulted "The Life of Benjamin Banneker" by Silvio Bedini, considered the definitive biography, he would have discovered no evidence for these claims. Jefferson appointed Andrew Ellicott to conduct the survey; Ellicott made Banneker his assistant for three months in 1791.
(8) Shipler, David K. (1998). "The Myths of America". A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America. New York: Vintage Books. pp. 196–197. ISBN 0679734546. LCCN 97002810. OCLC 39849003 – via Google Books.The Banneker story, impressive as it was, got embellished in 1987, when the public school system in Portland, Oregon, published African-American Baseline Essays, a thick stack of loose-leaf background papers for teachers, commissioned to encourage black history instruction. They have been used in Detroit, Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, Newark, and scattered schools elsewhere, although they have been attacked for gross inaccuracy in an entire literature of detailed criticism by respected historians. ....
(9) Bedini, 1999, p. 43. "Banneker's clock was by no means the first timepiece in tidewater Maryland, as occasionally has erroneously been claimed. Timepieces were well known and available from the very earliest English settlements, ...."
(10) Bedini, 1999, pp. 132–136. "An exhaustive search of government repositories, including the Public Buildings and Grounds files in the National Archives, and various collections in the Library of Congress, failed to turn up Banneker's name on any of the contemporary documents or records related to the selection, planning and survey of the City of Washington. Nor was he mentioned in any of the surviving correspondence and papers of Andrew Ellicott and of Pierre Charles L'Enfant. .... Although the exact date of Banneker's departure from the survey is not specified in Ellicott's report of expenditures, it occurred sometime late in the month of April 1791, following the arrival of one of Ellicott's brothers. It was not until some ten months after Banneker's departure from the scene that L'Enfant was dismissed, by means of a letter from Jefferson dated February 27, 1792. This conclusively dispels any basis for the legend that after L'Enfant's dismissal and his refusal to make available his plan of the city, Banneker recollected the plan in detail from which Ellicott was able to reconstruct it. Equally untrue and in fact impossible is the legend that Thomas Jefferson as secretary of state invited Banneker to luncheon at the White House. Jefferson during this period was in Philadelphia, the national capital in Washington had yet not been built, and there was no White House."
(11) Toscano, 2000. Archived September 12, 2019, at the Wayback Machine "Some writers, in an effort to build up their hero, claim that Banneker was the designer of Washington. Other writers have asserted that Banneker's role in the survey is a myth without documentation. Neither group is correct. Bedini does a professional job of sorting out the truth from the falsehoods."
(12) Berne, Bernard H. (May 20, 2000). "District History Lesson". OP/ED: Letters to the Editor. Washington, D.C.: The Washington Post. p. A.22. Archived from the original on November 6, 2012. Retrieved March 23, 2011.Austin H. Kiplinger and Walter E. Washington write that a proposed city museum at Mount Vernon Square will remind visitors that "George Washington engaged Pierre L' Enfant to map the city and about how Benjamin Banneker [helped] complete the project" [Close to Home, May 7]. Let's hope not.
Benjamin Banneker performed astronomical observations in 1791 when assisting Maj. Andrew Ellicott in a survey of the federal District's boundaries. He departed three months after the survey began, more than a year before its completion.
Meanwhile, a "Plan for the City of Washington" was drawn by one "Peter Charles L'Enfant" (sic). When George Washington chose to dismiss L'Enfant, it was Ellicott who revised L'Enfant's plan and completed the city's mapping. Banneker played no part in this.
(13) Murdock, Gail T. (November 11, 2002). Benjamin Banneker – the man and the myths. Maryland Historical Society. ISBN 0938420593.This very well-researched book also helps lay to rest some of the myths about what Banneker did and did not do during his most unusual lifetime; unfortunately, many websites and books continue to propagate these myths, probably because those authors do not understand what Banneker actually accomplished. Many state, for example, that Banneker's clock was an exact copy of one he saw, which is not true – he figured out the mathematics and physics on his own for a clock made out of wood, instead of trying simply to copy the small pocket watch that he was lent to observe. However remarkable this clock was, it was not the first clock made in America. Other sources continually repeat the myth that when Pierre l'Enfant was fired from the job of laying out the new Federal City, Benjamin Banneker recreated l'Enfant's plans from memory. Bedini lays this myth to rest .....
{{cite book}}:|work=ignored (help)
(14) Cerami, 2002, p. 142. "He (Banneker) has existed in dim memory mainly on mangled ideas about his work, and even utter falsehoods that are unwise attempts to glorify a man who needs no such embellishments."
(15) Levine, Michael (November 10, 2003). "L'Enfant designed more than D.C.: He designed a 200-year-old controversy". History: Planning Our Capital City: Get to know the District of Columbia. DCpages.com. Archived from the original on December 6, 2003. Retrieved December 31, 2016.
(16) Fasanelli, Florence D, "Benjamin Banneker's Life and Mathematics: Web of Truth? Legends as Facts; Man vs. Legend", a talk given on January 8, 2004, at the MAA/AMS meeting in Phoenix, AZ. Cited in Mahoney, John F (July 2010). "Benjamin Banneker's Inscribed Equilateral Triangle – References". Loci. 2. Mathematical Association of America. Archived from the original on February 21, 2014. Retrieved December 26, 2017.
(17) Hawkins, Don Alexander (November 12, 2005). "Benjamin Banneker, Man and Myth". Opinions. The Washington Post. Archived from the original on March 10, 2021. Retrieved March 10, 2021.Benjamin Banneker's achievements, against the odds, made him an American hero, but he has been mythologized to some extent.
For example, John Lockwood said Banneker "helped re-create the plans for the city of Washington," but Banneker actually finished his work on the survey of the perimeter of the District and went home to Ellicott Mills in April 1791, never to return. Pierre L'Enfant did not depart Washington until the following February, leaving Benjamin Ellicott, a brother of the principal surveyor, to draw a small version of the plan to be engraved.
(18) Weatherly, Myra (2006). "An Important Task". Benjamin Banneker: American Scientific Pioneer. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Compass Point Books. pp. 76–77. ISBN 0756515793. LCCN 2005028708. OCLC 61864300. Retrieved August 27, 2019 – via Google Books.
.
The conflicts surrounding L'Enfant gave rise to an often–repeated story that involved Banneker. According to the story, Banneker, having seen the original design for the city only once, re-created it in detail after L'Enfant returned to France with the original plans. This legend has led some people to credit Banneker with a greater role in creating the capital city. However, there is no evidence that Banneker contributed anything to the design of the city or that he ever met L'Enfant.
Modern historians acknowledge that the inaccurate information—the myths surrounding Banneker—resulted in his contributions to the city being overvalued. Unfortunately, those myths sometimes obscure Banneker's greatest contribution to society—the almanacs that he would publish in his later years.
(19) Johnson, Richard (2007). "Banneker, Benjamin (1731–1806)". Online Encyclopedia of Significant People and Places in African American History. BlackPast.org. Archived from the original on March 9, 2014. Retrieved May 14, 2015.(Banneker's) life and work have become enshrouded in legend and anecdote.
(20) Bigbytes. "Benjamin Banneker Stories". dcsymbols dot com. Archived from the original on December 8, 2010. Retrieved January 1, 2017.
(21) Arnebeck, Bob. "Ellicott's letter to the commissioners on engraving the plan of the city, in which no reference is made to Banneker". The General and the Plan. Bob Arnebeck's Web Pages. Archived from the original on July 8, 2011. Retrieved May 6, 2012.How did the myth of Banneker helping Ellicott remember the plan take hold? I believe it is because the first name of the brother who helped Ellicott is Benjamin, and so Benjamin Banneker was mistaken for Benjamin Ellicott. I think it is nonsense to assume that when L'Enfant refused access to the "original" plan that meant that Ellicott had to rely on memory to reconstruct the plan. L'Enfant had the "large" plan. Ellicott probably had access to small renditions or drafts of the plan which, of course, he and his brother had helped create by their surveys of the city.
(22) Maryland Historical Society Library Department (February 6, 2014). "The Dreams of Benjamin Banneker". H. Furlong Baldwin Library: Underbelly. Maryland Historical Society. Archived from the original on September 17, 2020. Retrieved September 17, 2020.Over the 200 years since the death of Benjamin Banneker (1731–1806), his story has become a muddled combination of fact, inference, misinformation, hyperbole, and legend. Like many other figures throughout history, the small amount of surviving source material has nurtured the development of a degree of mythology surrounding his story.
(23) "A look into Benjamin Banneker's 1793 Almanac". Book of the Month: Banneker's Almanac. Haverford, Pennsylvania: Haverford College. April 18, 2016. Archived from the original on October 21, 2017. Retrieved April 9, 2020.In 1806, shortly after Banneker's death, a fire at his home destroyed most of his personal papers (Gillispie). This gap in substantial archival material has hardly hindered the development of the Benjamin Banneker legend; perhaps it has even aided its growth. ..... The narrative that tells of Banneker's life as one of mythical success and unprecedented exceptionalism easily draws an audience, but it washes over what might be more intellectually rewarding questions about the man's life. .... For now, the legend of Benjamin Banneker will continue to exist in his old almanacs and in present culture, serving as an inspiring enigma for those who wonder what lies beyond the surface-level stories of the past.
(24) Arnebeck, Bob (January 2, 2017). "Washington Examined: Seat of Empire: the General and the Plan 1790 to 1801". Blogger. Archived from the original on October 22, 2017. Retrieved May 4, 2021.Meanwhile Andrew Ellicott, the nation's Surveyor General, finished surveying the boundary lines of the federal district, and joined L'Enfant in laying out the city. (Ellicott showed a fine sense of the opportunity presented by the project by hiring a mathematician who was a "free Negro," to help with the survey. The Georgetown newspaper noted the significance of Benjamin Banneker's participation but, nearly sixty years old, he left the arduous project in May and returned to Baltimore to publish his almanac, and thus, contrary to legend, had nothing to do with L'Enfant's plan.)
(25) Blakely, Julia (February 15, 2017). "America's First Known African American Scientist and Mathematician". Unbound (blog). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Libraries, Smithsonian Institution. Archived from the original on August 15, 2017. Retrieved August 15, 2017...., much myth and anecdote surround the life and work of Banneker. An uncertain legacy grew, in part, from the destruction of almost all his papers and possessions when his log cabin home burnt down at the moment he was being buried.
(26) Bellis, Mary (updated June 20, 2017). "Biography of Benjamin Banneker, Author and Naturalist". ThoughtCo. New York: Dotdash. Archived from the original on October 14, 2017. Retrieved December 11, 2020.Banneker's life became the source of legend after his death, with many attributing certain accomplishments to him for which there is little or no evidence in the historical record.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
(27) Burns, Janet (May 23, 2018). "Benjamin Banneker". International Times. Retrieved April 28, 2021.(Banneker's clock) may have been the first clock ever assembled completely from American parts, according to (Elizabeth Ross) Haynes (although other historians have since disputed this). ... The plans for the large city were laid out by French architect and engineer Pierre Charles L'Enfant, who volunteered for service in the American Revolution's Continental Army and was hired for the project by George Washington in 1791. Before long, however, tensions mounted over its direction and progress of the project, and when L'Enfant was fired in 1792, he took off with the plans in tow.
But according to legend, the plans weren't actually lost: Banneker and the Ellicotts had worked closely with L'Enfant and his plans while surveying the city's site. As the University of Massachusetts explains, Banneker had actually committed the plans to memory "[and] was able to reproduce the complete layout—streets, parks, major buildings." However, the University of Massachusetts also points out that other historians doubt Banneker had any involvement in this part of the survey at all, instead saying that Andrew and his brother were the ones who recreated L'Enfant's plan. It's an intriguing myth, but it may only be that.
(28) Biography.com Editors (April 12, 2019). "Benjamin Banneker Biography". The Biography.com website. A&E Television Networks. Archived from the original on June 23, 2019. Retrieved April 8, 2020.With limited materials having been preserved related to Banneker's life and career, there's been a fair amount of legend and misinformation presented.
{{cite web}}:|author=has generic name (help)
(29) Keene, Louis. "Benjamin Banneker: The Black Tobacco Farmer Who The Presidents Couldn't Ignore". The White House Historical Association. Archived from the original on August 31, 2019. Retrieved February 25, 2020.Perhaps owing to the scarcity of recorded fact about his remarkable life, and because he was often invoked symbolically to advance social causes like abolition, Banneker's story has been susceptible to mythmaking. He has been incorrectly credited with drawing the street grid of Washington, D.C., making the first clock on the Eastern seaboard, being the first professional astronomer in America, and discovering the seventeen-year birth cycle of cicadas.
(30) Fayyad, Abdallah (June 5, 2020). "D.C.'s Street Plan Is A Monument To Democracy". dcist. Washington, D.C.: WAMU 88.5: American University Radio. Archived from the original on April 29, 2021.Washington's core was laid out by Pierre L'Enfant, a French-American engineer and city planner, when the federal government decided it needed a new capitol. George Washington carved out 10 miles square on the Potomac River, and appointed L'Enfant in 1791 to plan an ambitious new seat of government.
But L'Enfant didn't exactly carry out his vision alone: He was dismissed from the job in 1792—and he reportedly took his layout with him. That's when Benjamin Banneker, a free black man who had surveyed the capital and helped establish its boundary points, stepped in. Banneker is said to have redrawn L'Enfant's plans from memory in two days, though whether actually he did has been debated by historians; his history and legacy have yet to be fully excavated.
(31) Brownell, Richard (updated December 17, 2020) (February 8, 2016). "Benjamin Banneker's Capital Contributions". Boundary Stones: WETA's History Blog. Arlington County, Virginia: WETA. Archived from the original on April 28, 2021. Retrieved April 28, 2021.L'Enfant's plans were well received, but he proved to be extremely difficult to work with, arguing incessantly with the commissioners in charge of the capital project. .... When L'Enfant left the project, he took all the designs with him, leaving the project in disarray.
Unsure of how to proceed, Ellicott and the other planners feared they might have to start from scratch. According to writer Gaius Chamberlain, "Banneker surprised them when he asserted that he could reproduce the plans from memory and in two days did exactly as he had promised."
There has been much controversy over the years about whether such an event actually happened. Some historians claim that many of the facts about Banneker's life were embellished or mythologized, leaving the fact that he was able to reimagine L'Enfant's plans in dispute. Others have theorized that it was Andrew Ellicott's brother Benjamin who aided in redrawing the plans from memory, theorizing that he was confused with Banneker because they shared the same first name.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
(32) Fowler, Jermaine (2021). "Podcast #7: Benjamin Banneker (transcript)". The Humanity Archive. Archived from the original on April 28, 2021. Retrieved April 28, 2021.So when a lot of people think of Benjamin Banneker, they may know him because of the story of him assisting with the layout of the nation's capital in Washington, DC. And I was troubled to find out that with no real evidence legend has it that Benjamin, Banneker single handedly laid out in, develop the plans for Washington DC himself with no help.
And this is the popular narrative in a lot of circles. And even in the mainstream media, the Washington Post published the story citing this is fact, and this is part of his mythology and it's probably untrue, but it made me wonder, like, why do people embellish history? Why would someone take a man like Banneker with the real moral and professional greatness, and then exaggerate a story with things uncertain. Why do we embellish historical figures in general? Maybe in this case, there is something to prove black people have latched onto the great figures to prove competence and to prove value. Maybe it really was thought to be the truth.