Without Benjamin Banneker, our nation's capital would not exist as we know it. After a year of work, the Frenchman hired by George Washington to design the capital, L'Enfant, stormed off the job, taking all the plans. Banneker, placed on the planning committee at Thomas Jefferson's request, saved the project by reproducing from memory, in two days, a complete layout of the streets, parks, and major buildings. Thus Washington, D.C. itself can be considered a monument to the genius of this great man.
Banneker attended an elementary school run by Quakers (one of the few "color-blind" communities of that time); in fact, he later adopted many Quaker habits and ideas. As a young man, he was given a pocket-watch by a business associate: this inspired Banneker to create his own clock, made entirely of wood (1753). Famous as the first clock built in the New World, it kept perfect time for forty years.
During the Revolutionary War, wheat grown on a farm designed by Banneker helped save the fledgling U.S. troops from
starving. After the War, Banneker took up astronomy: in 1789, he successfully predicted an eclipse. From 1792 to 1802, Banneker published an annual Farmer's Almanac, for which he did all the calculations himself.
![Banneker's clock](https://www.bnl.gov/bera/activities/globe/Banneker_files/clock.gif)
The Almanac won Banneker fame as far away as England and France. He used his reputation to promote social change: namely, to eliminate racism and war. He sent a copy of his first Almanac to Thomas Jefferson, with a letter protesting that the man who declared that "all men are created equal" owned slaves. Jefferson responded with enthusiastic words, but no political reform. Similarly, Banneker's attempts "to inspire a veneration for human life and an horror for war" fell mainly on deaf ears.
But Banneker's reputation was never in doubt. He spent his last years as an internationally known polymath: farmer, engineer, surveyor, city planner, astronomer, mathematician, inventor, author, and social critic. He died on October 25, 1806. Today, Banneker does not have the reputation he should, although the entire world could still learn from his words: "Ah, why will men forget that they are brethren?"
![](https://www.bnl.gov/bera/activities/globe/Banneker_files/banneker2.gif)
From the beginning, Banneker, who was taught reading and religion by his grandmother and who attended one of the first integrated schools, showed a great propensity for mathematics and an astounding mechanical ability. Later, when he was forced to leave school to work the family farm, he continued to be an avid reader.
Although he had no previous training, when he was only 22 he invented a wooden clock that kept accurate time throughout his life. According to "Gay & Lesbian Biography," Banneker "applied his natural mechanical and mathematical abilities to diagrams of wheels and gears, and converted these into three-dimensional wooden clock-parts he carved with a knife." People from all over came to see the clock.
In 1773 he began making astronomical calculations for almanacs, and in the spring of 1789 he accurately predicted a solar eclipse; that same year, he was the first African-American appointed to the President's Capital Commission.
He never married and is not known to have had any liaisons with women. In one of his early essays he stated that poverty, disease and violence are more tolerable than the "pungent stings
A self-taught surveyor, in 1789 he was called on to assist George Ellicott and Pierre Charles L'Enfant in laying out what would become the nation's capital.
In 1790, he sold his farm and spent the rest of his
Toward the end of his life, he produced a dissertation on bees, a study of locust-plague cycles and more letters on segregationist trends in America. He died at age 75 in Boston in 1806. In 1980, the U.S.
FYI: I can neither confirmed nor deny the information of his sexuality
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