Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. We mentioned Benjamin Banneker in our New Year's
Speaker 1: Day episode on Almanacs and day Planners, and our episode
Speaker 1: on him is from early in our time as hosts
Speaker 1: of the show. It came out on June tenth, twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: and it is Today's Saturday Classic, and it's also connected
Speaker 1: to our most recent episodes. Among other things, we talk
Speaker 1: about some arrangements Banniker made for his later years using
Speaker 1: information from actuarial tables. So enjoy Welcome to Stuff You
Speaker 1: Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I am Tracy V. Wilson and
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Frying, and today we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: a particularly amazing person in American history, and that is
Speaker 1: Benjamin Banneker. Yes, who is someone I had not known
Speaker 1: very much about before we started this little project. I'm
Speaker 1: not I had not either, and I learned a whole
Speaker 1: lot of fascinating stuff. There's really a lot that was
Speaker 1: particularly amazing about his life. He had almost no official schooling,
Speaker 1: but he turned out to be such a scholar that
Speaker 1: today there are schools and professorships and educational foundations and
Speaker 1: things like that named after him. He and his family
Speaker 1: made up a really small handful of the about two
Speaker 1: hundred free African Americans who were living in Maryland at
Speaker 1: the time, where there were at that point about four
Speaker 1: thousand slaves and thirteen thousand white people. And he lived
Speaker 1: in an age when African Americans were really considered to
Speaker 1: be inferior to white people and incapable of scholarly thought.
Speaker 1: But he managed, in spite of that existing perception to
Speaker 1: publish a series of really well respected almanacs. And he
Speaker 1: was appointed by George Washington to help survey the land
Speaker 1: that would eventually become Washington, d c. Which is really cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it all started when he was born on November
Speaker 1: ninth in seventeen thirty one in Maryland. He has a
Speaker 1: pretty interesting family history. His maternal grandmother was an English
Speaker 1: woman named Molly Walsh or Welsh, it differs depending on
Speaker 1: Here's account you're looking at. She had been falsely convicted
Speaker 1: of stealing milk. The bucket had really been kicked over
Speaker 1: by a cow. But she was sent to Maryland as
Speaker 1: an indentured servant, and once she had completed her indenture,
Speaker 1: she borrowed some money to rent a farm or rent
Speaker 1: some land to start a farm, and she bought two slaves.
Speaker 1: One of the slaves was known as Banicky, whose name
Speaker 1: had originally been Banna as one word in Ka the
Speaker 1: second word, and who had been a chief or a
Speaker 1: king before being enslaved. And once she had paid off
Speaker 1: all her debts, Molly actually freed both the slaves in
Speaker 1: sixteen ninety six and she married Banickee. This marriage was
Speaker 1: illegal in Maryland, so this was a lot of really
Speaker 1: astounding events happening around the beginning of his family, right
Speaker 1: or just completely usual for the time. One of Mollie
Speaker 1: and Banickee's children was a daughter named Mary, and Mary
Speaker 1: eventually when she grew up, purchased her own slave, who
Speaker 1: had been named Robert when he was baptized. He was
Speaker 1: from the region of Africa that was known at the
Speaker 1: time as Guinea, and that most likely was somewhere in
Speaker 1: the stretch of Africa that spans west to east from
Speaker 1: Ghana to Nigeria. Like her mother, Mollie later freed and
Speaker 1: married Robert, and when she did, he took her last name.
Speaker 1: So it's a little bit unclear how exactly the last
Speaker 1: name morphed into Banneker, but Mary and Robert had four children,
Speaker 1: Benjamin and then his three younger sisters, and at some
Speaker 1: point they were all going by the name Banniker and
Speaker 1: not Banickee anymore. Yes, Benjamin's parents bought a small tobacco
Speaker 1: farm next to Molly and Bannicke's farm. The farm was
Speaker 1: registered to both Benjamin and his father. Mollie taught Benjamin
Speaker 1: to read using the Bible, and he actually went to
Speaker 1: an interracial Quaker school for boys for a little while
Speaker 1: when he was young, but he didn't get much formal education.
Speaker 1: As Tracy mentioned at the top of the podcast, the
Speaker 1: school was only open in the winters, and so it
Speaker 1: wasn't like a regular full time, year round school, and
Speaker 1: it really was only available for lessons when the boys
Speaker 1: weren't needed to help their families on the farms. So
Speaker 1: even though he really had not much formal education at all,
Speaker 1: he had a very avid interest in learning, and he
Speaker 1: was especially interested in math and mechanics, and so he
Speaker 1: wound up teaching himself. Almost his whole education was self taught,
Speaker 1: and in addition to the mechanical and mathematic things that
Speaker 1: he really delved into, he also studied the stars and
Speaker 1: taught himself astronomy, and he also learned to play the
Speaker 1: flute and the violin, which kind of blows my mind
Speaker 1: because picking up a musical instrument and learning how to
Speaker 1: play it is quite a feat, yeah, of itself, even
Speaker 1: if you have lessons well. And picking up things like
Speaker 1: complex mathematics and the kinds of calculations that are required
Speaker 1: for astronomy without really having someone to help you along
Speaker 1: is also pretty astounding. Yeah. When he was fifteen, Benjamin
Speaker 1: took over the family farm, and one of the things
Speaker 1: that he did was he designed and built an irrigation
Speaker 1: system to divert water from a spring that was nearby
Speaker 1: to their crops, so he was able to keep the
Speaker 1: crops alive even when there were droughts going on. And
Speaker 1: he also used crop rotation techniques that weren't really in
Speaker 1: common practice at the time. And as an adult, Benjamin
Speaker 1: generally wore Quaker style clothing, so he stuck pretty much
Speaker 1: to simple dark jackets and white shirts. And although he
Speaker 1: had some affinity for the Quakers, he never actually joined.
Speaker 1: He just kind of emulated them in his style. Right.
Speaker 1: Here's a description of him from an eighteen fifty four
Speaker 1: sketch of his life Banneker, whilst in the vigor of manhood,
Speaker 1: was an industrious and thriving farmer. He kept his grounds
Speaker 1: in good order, had horses, cows, and many hives of bees,
Speaker 1: cultivated a good garden, and lived comfortably during the winter
Speaker 1: months and at other seasons of leisure. His active mind
Speaker 1: was employed in improving the knowledge he had gained at school.
Speaker 1: He thus became acquainted with the most difficult portions of arithmetic.
Speaker 1: He also read all the books on general literature that
Speaker 1: he could borrow, and occasionally diverted his mind with an
Speaker 1: ingenious effort in mechanics. That's kind of like a It's
Speaker 1: so quaint you would think it was out of fiction.
Speaker 1: I didn't know it was an actual humans, the real person. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So when he was twenty two, he actually made a clock.
Speaker 1: He had seen a pocket watch belonging to a friend.
Speaker 1: We're not sure on the pronunciation of the last name.
Speaker 1: It could be Joseph Levy or Levi, But Benjamin had
Speaker 1: been completely fascinated with this watch, and so Joseph actually
Speaker 1: let him take it apart, and so Benjamin sketched out
Speaker 1: all the opponents and put the watch back together in
Speaker 1: working order, and then used that experiential learning to make
Speaker 1: a clock from scratch. So today this probably doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like a giant deal because clocks are ubiquitous, but at
Speaker 1: the time, nearly all of the clocks in the United
Speaker 1: States were imported from England. There wasn't really anyone in
Speaker 1: the US who was making clocks. And Benjamin's clock was
Speaker 1: made entirely out of wood, apart from an iron bell
Speaker 1: that he got that was struck hourly, and this clock
Speaker 1: ran for more than forty years, keeping good time that
Speaker 1: entire time until the day that Benjamin was buried after
Speaker 1: his death when his home in all of its contents,
Speaker 1: burned in a fire. So, based on the watch he
Speaker 1: had seen and taken apart one time, he made a
Speaker 1: working wooden clock that kept time for forty years. Worked. Well. Yes,
Speaker 1: like you said, it seems simple because clocks are everywhere.
Speaker 1: But if anyone has ever taken apart a watch, even
Speaker 1: to replace a battery, and you lose one spring, like,
Speaker 1: forget it, it's over. You have to go to an
Speaker 1: expert at that point, right, So the idea that he
Speaker 1: just took one apart, put it back together, and they went, oh,
Speaker 1: I get it. Yeah, it's fine. Then I can make
Speaker 1: one went forward making its own. It's really pretty impressive. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this clock is cited as the first striking clock
Speaker 1: built in the United States, and he used this experience
Speaker 1: to sort of start up a little side business or
Speaker 1: repairing people's watches and clocks. People who came to the
Speaker 1: area would stop by just to see the clock and
Speaker 1: to talk to Benjamin, who by this point had developed
Speaker 1: a reputation for being extremely intelligent but also modest and gentlemanly.
Speaker 1: He became familiar with the Ellikotts, a family from Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: who had built a mill and established a town not
Speaker 1: very far from Benjamin's farm, and Benjamin had been a
Speaker 1: frequent visitor while the mill was being built because he'd
Speaker 1: liked to observe all the mechanics and machinery involved in
Speaker 1: the process, and he and the Ellicotts became friends, and
Speaker 1: eventually Georgia Ellicott loned Benjamin all manner of books in
Speaker 1: math and astronomy, and so he now had a whole
Speaker 1: new assortment of resources to expand his knowledge and education. Later,
Speaker 1: he used these books, along with some tools that George
Speaker 1: loaned to him, to predict to predict the April fourteenth,
Speaker 1: seventeen eighty nine solar eclipse almost accurately. This is another
Speaker 1: thing that maybe doesn't sound like a crazy accomplishment today,
Speaker 1: because we know when all the eclipses are happening, and
Speaker 1: we can watch them on the internet. But most of
Speaker 1: the people who were predicting an eclipse at that point,
Speaker 1: they were predicting that one wrong. And the almost in
Speaker 1: his own calculations came from an error in one of
Speaker 1: the textbooks, not from his own calculations. So he turned out,
Speaker 1: even though he wasn't right on the money with it,
Speaker 1: his prediction was more accurate than a lot of the
Speaker 1: more well known astronomers had made at the time. Reportedly,
Speaker 1: he also had theorized that Sirius was actually two stars
Speaker 1: instead of one, which it is, but at the time
Speaker 1: it was believed to be just one heavenly body. In
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety, George Washington appointed Benjamin to the team that
Speaker 1: was going to survey the federal territory which would later
Speaker 1: become Washington, d C. And Major Andrew Ellicott was also
Speaker 1: on the team. In writing about this, Georgetown Weekly Ledger
Speaker 1: said quote Ellicott was attended by Benjamin Banneker, an Ethiopian
Speaker 1: whose abilities as a surveyor and an astronomer clearly proved
Speaker 1: that mister Jefferson's concluding that race of men were void
Speaker 1: of mental endowments was without foundation. That mister Jefferson Jefferson,
Speaker 1: of course, being Thomas Jefferson. Yeah, so he actually became
Speaker 1: quite an ambassador for the non Caucasians that were living
Speaker 1: in America at the time. Right, we'll talk about that
Speaker 1: more and just a little bit, but we'll talk for
Speaker 1: a moment about the survey work first. There's a story
Speaker 1: that when Pierre Lafont left the Washington d C Project,
Speaker 1: he took all the plans with him and then Benjamin
Speaker 1: recreated them from memory. So modern historians think that this
Speaker 1: is probably an embellishment. There aren't any documents at the
Speaker 1: time that confirm it. It seems to have arisen a little
Speaker 1: bit later. So while it's probably an apocryphal story, it
Speaker 1: speaks to the reputation that he had developed for himself
Speaker 1: at this point. And when Benjamin's parents passed away, they
Speaker 1: left him the family farm, so he built himself a
Speaker 1: cabin there where he could work, and he also had
Speaker 1: a study and it had a skylight so he could
Speaker 1: continue to study the stars. When he was about sixty,
Speaker 1: Benjamin worked out a deal with the Elikots for them
Speaker 1: to take possession of his farm where he continued to live,
Speaker 1: in exchange for a pension that he could live on
Speaker 1: so that he could spend more time studying and writing.
Speaker 1: And it was an arrangement very similar to today's reverse mortgages,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's actually referred to as the first reverse
Speaker 1: mortgage in history. Yeah, where he's kind of pre selling
Speaker 1: the land that he's still living on. Yes, because, as
Speaker 1: we've talked about in other podcasts, sustaining yourself on a
Speaker 1: farm pretty much a full time, constant job, and he
Speaker 1: wanted to have time to study and write. So he
Speaker 1: worked out this deal where you know, they would get
Speaker 1: all of his land upon his death. He could continue
Speaker 1: to live there, but they would pay him some money
Speaker 1: every month. He used some actuarial tables to do this.
Speaker 1: It turned out he lived a little longer than expected. Whoops,
Speaker 1: but it was okay. They continued. They continued to pay
Speaker 1: him throughout as agreed. For six years. From seventeen ninety
Speaker 1: two to seventeen ninety seven, Benjamin published Almanacs, which were
Speaker 1: known as the Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia Almanac and Ephemeris.
Speaker 1: He was the first African American to publish an almanac,
Speaker 1: and those almanacs started out as celestial tables and charts
Speaker 1: of planetary movements, and as with other almanacs at the time,
Speaker 1: they mixed a lot of different information into one book,
Speaker 1: including Benjamin's astronomy work, tied information, medical knowledge, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And they also included a lot of essays, poems, and literature,
Speaker 1: so they weren't just books of straight up facts. They
Speaker 1: served an abolitionist purpose as well, since they contained a
Speaker 1: collection of anti slavery speeches and essays, so again going
Speaker 1: back to him being an ambassador for his people. In
Speaker 1: the end, he published six of these almanacs in twenty
Speaker 1: eight editions and they received a lot of high praise
Speaker 1: for being a very good quality, but they were eventually
Speaker 1: discontinued due to low sales. And he had created all
Speaker 1: of the ephemerists, which are star chart pieces, as well
Speaker 1: as other astronomical work, all the way through eighteen oh four,
Speaker 1: but these later years weren't published. And in addition to
Speaker 1: all of that writing, he also did some work about
Speaker 1: seventeen year locusts and bees, which is pertinent today since
Speaker 1: we're there's much talk in the news about the seventeen
Speaker 1: year locust cycle. I know that was an accident. I
Speaker 1: was delighted when I stumbled across them, across the locust thing,
Speaker 1: and went, well, this is going to turn out to
Speaker 1: be particularly relevant because of locusts. So a lot of
Speaker 1: his fame has to do with his self taught education
Speaker 1: and his work as a scientist. He was also an
Speaker 1: abolitionist and an activist for peace. His first almanac also
Speaker 1: recommended that the US government have a Department of Peace,
Speaker 1: which finally happened about two hundred years later when the
Speaker 1: founding of the with the founding of the US Institutes
Speaker 1: of Peace, and Benjamin also actively spoke and wrote about
Speaker 1: abolition before the US really even had a strong abolitionist movement.
Speaker 1: He was a complete forerunner. Yeah. In seventeen ninety one,
Speaker 1: he wrote to Thomas Jefferson, who was at the time
Speaker 1: the Secretary of State, about slavery. He enclosed this letter
Speaker 1: with a handwritten copy of his not yet published almanac
Speaker 1: for that year, and this was in part a response
Speaker 1: to Jefferson's notes on the State of Virginia, in which
Speaker 1: Jefferson wrote at length about what he considered to be
Speaker 1: the inferiority of blacks. And in this letter he described
Speaker 1: who he was, and he he tried to appeal to
Speaker 1: Jefferson's better nature, and he wanted to point out the
Speaker 1: inconsistency in the Founding Father's talk about everyone being equal
Speaker 1: while still owning slaves and describing blacks's inferior And he
Speaker 1: wrote about the young colonies attempting to free themselves from
Speaker 1: the British crown, and how the government should be able
Speaker 1: to empathize with slaves having had their own struggles for freedom,
Speaker 1: And he pointed out the irony in the quote we
Speaker 1: hold these truths to be self evident, that all men
Speaker 1: are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator
Speaker 1: with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty,
Speaker 1: and the pursuit of happiness. That's very quite moving to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he was very articulate. Here's a selection from near
Speaker 1: the end of the letter. I suppose that your knowledge
Speaker 1: of the situation of my brethren is too extensive to
Speaker 1: need a recital here, Neither shall I presume to prescribe
Speaker 1: methods by which they may be relieved, otherwise than by
Speaker 1: recommending to you and all others to wean yourself from
Speaker 1: these narrow prejudices, which which you have imbibed with respect
Speaker 1: to them. And as Job proposed to his friends, put
Speaker 1: your soul in their soul's stead. Thus shall your hearts
Speaker 1: be enlarged with kindness and benevolence toward them. And just
Speaker 1: shall you need neither the direction of myself or others
Speaker 1: in what manner to proceed herein. And so he's pretty
Speaker 1: much saying, you can put yourself in our shoes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: use a little empathy. Yeah, you might look at this differently.
Speaker 1: He's pretty much I'm not going to tell you that
Speaker 1: it's specifics of how to do it. Here's sort of
Speaker 1: just a simple step of showing some empathy. And then
Speaker 1: he turns to a rather more practical statement, because he says,
Speaker 1: announ sir, although my sympathy and affection for my brethren
Speaker 1: hath caused my enlargement. Thus far I ardently hope that
Speaker 1: your candor and generosity will plead with you in my behalf.
Speaker 1: Then I make known to you that it was not
Speaker 1: originally my design, but having taken up my pen in
Speaker 1: order to direct to you as a present a copy
Speaker 1: of an almanac which I have calculated for the succeeding year.
Speaker 1: I was unexpectedly and unavoidably led there too, so I
Speaker 1: hadn't just meant to write you a note with my almanac.
Speaker 1: But once I had the pen in my hand, once
Speaker 1: they got go in, I need to tell you the
Speaker 1: rest of this too, And Jefferson replied to him. He
Speaker 1: responded in less than two weeks, which at that time
Speaker 1: is a pretty quick turnaround. And the letter, which is
Speaker 1: dated August thirtieth of seventeen ninety one, says, I thank
Speaker 1: you sincerely for your letter of the nineteenth instant, and
Speaker 1: for the almanac it contained. Nobody wishes more than I
Speaker 1: do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature
Speaker 1: has given to our Black brethren talents equal to those
Speaker 1: of other colors of men, and that the appearance of
Speaker 1: the want of them is owing merely to the degraded
Speaker 1: condition of their existence, both in Africa and America. I
Speaker 1: can add with truth that nobody wishes more ardently to
Speaker 1: see a good system commenced for raising the condition both
Speaker 1: of their body and mind to what it ought to be.
Speaker 1: As far as the imbecility of their present existence, and
Speaker 1: other circumstances which cannot be neglected, will admit. And then
Speaker 1: he goes on to say, I have taken the liberty
Speaker 1: of sending your almanac to Monsieur Condozette, Secretary of the
Speaker 1: Academy of Sciences at Paris and member of the philanthrop
Speaker 1: Thropic Society, because I considered it as a document to
Speaker 1: which your whole color had a right for their justification
Speaker 1: against the doubts which have been entertained of them. I
Speaker 1: am with great esteem, sir, your most obedient, humble servant,
Speaker 1: just really quite lovely. Yeah, it's simultaneously a lovely and
Speaker 1: flattering letter without really acknowledging a lot of what was
Speaker 1: pointed out to him in the first place, which continues
Speaker 1: to be a running theme in the subject of Thomas
Speaker 1: Jefferson and slavery and race. And then Benjamin put this
Speaker 1: whole correspondence in his seventeen ninety three Almanac, and you
Speaker 1: can read it all online and we will link to
Speaker 1: it in the show notes. I wonder what Jefferson thought
Speaker 1: of that, Like, I didn't mean that for everybody. I
Speaker 1: just don't know well. And I know that there have
Speaker 1: been passed in the archive. There are other episodes about
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson, and there has been so much work at
Speaker 1: length about the subject of Thomas Jefferson and Racey. It's
Speaker 1: a whole giant field of discussion. That's there are people
Speaker 1: that spend their entire scholarly lives studying nothing else, yes,
Speaker 1: but his relationship to racial issues. Right. So, after his
Speaker 1: almanacs ceased to publish, and after his work in Washington,
Speaker 1: d c. Was finished, Benjamin spent a lot of his
Speaker 1: later life with study and writing. After he had an
Speaker 1: illness in his later years, he made arrangements for how
Speaker 1: he wanted all of his work to be taken care
Speaker 1: of after his death, but unfortunately much of it was
Speaker 1: destroyed when his house burned and Benjamin Bannaker died approximately
Speaker 1: on October twenty fifth of eighteen oh six. I know,
Speaker 1: as we said at the top of the podcast, today
Speaker 1: there are schools and professorships and foundations named after him,
Speaker 1: and he was put on a commemorative stamp in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1: So even though in the world of African American scientists,
Speaker 1: in the world of early forerunners of the abolitionist movement
Speaker 1: in America. He's maybe not one of the most prominent names.
Speaker 1: He definitely had a legacy and did some just really
Speaker 1: amazing work, especially considering that he had almost no formal education.
Speaker 1: Well then, he was so ahead of his time on
Speaker 1: most Oh yes, I mean scientifically, mathematically abolition. He was
Speaker 1: like many steps ahead of the rest of the people
Speaker 1: around him. Yes, it was quite might be why he's
Speaker 1: not always associated with those things. He's kind of too
Speaker 1: early to play an obvious part in the bigger stage
Speaker 1: when things really heated up. Yeah, I am quite fond
Speaker 1: of him now too. I love his story. He knew
Speaker 1: very little about him before I started researching, And of
Speaker 1: course I'm always fond of scientists who like to study
Speaker 1: things like stars and bees who wouldn't. Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is
Speaker 1: out of the archive, if you heard an email address
Speaker 1: or a Facebook RL or something similar over the course
Speaker 1: of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current
Speaker 1: email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You
Speaker 1: can find us all over social media at missed inistory,
Speaker 1: and you can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts,
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