The Life of Benjamin Banneker

The Life of Benjamin Banneker

Benjamin Banneker was born about 10
miles from Baltimore, Maryland along Patapsco
River on November 9, 1731. His mother and
father were former slaves, by purchasing their
freedom. Benjamin spent most of his young life
living on a farm and going to a Quaker school. He
had an eight-grade education by the time he was
fifteen. When he was 21 years old in 1752, he
borrowed a pocket watch from a wealthy neighbor,
took it apart, made a drawing of what each
component looked like, then, reassembled it and
returned it, full functioning, to the neighbor. From
his drawings he then proceeded to carve wooden
replicas of each part. Calculating the proper
number of teeth for each gear and the necessary
relationships between the gears, he constructed a
working, wooden clock that kept accurate time and
struck the hours for over 50 years. At the
somewhat old age of 58, Banneker began
studying astronomy (the study of the stars) and
was soon able to predict future solar and lunar
eclipses. Banneker succefully predicted thr solar
eclipse that occured on April 14, 1789. Benjamin
compiled the ephemeras, or information table, for
annual almanacs that were published for the
years 1792-1797. "Benjamin Benneker's
Almanac" was a top seller from Pennsylvania to
Virginia and even into Kentucky. In 1791,
Banneker was a technical assistant on a three
man team, calculating and designing the a
Federal District, which is now known as
Washington D.C. He was the first Afro-American to
recieve a pesidential appointment. Banneker was
often pointed to as proof that Afro-Americans were
not intellectually inferior to European Americans.
Thomas Jefferson himself noted this in a letter to
Banneker. Benjamin Banneker died on October
9th (Which is date of my birthday), 1806 at the age
of 74. A few small memorial traces still exist in
Ellicott City/Oella region of Maryland, where
Banneker spent his entire life except for the...