How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [34]
Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806) (photo credit 11.1)
After Molly and Bannka’s daughter married Robert, the young couple took on the farm work, while Molly took on the task of educating her grandson, Benjamin, and his younger sisters. For a brief period, Benjamin attended a nearby Quaker school (the Quakers being not only abolitionists but continually in the forefront of equal rights). As with most rural children in that era, Benjamin stopped attending school once he was old enough to assist his parents on the farm. In time Robert and Mary purchased additional acreage, the records reflecting their name often being listed as Banneker. As his parents aged and his sisters married, Benjamin took over the farm.
Despite his relationship with his Quaker neighbors, Banneker’s journal reveals that he was as vulnerable as other African Americans at that time and for centuries to come. On December 18, 1790, he recorded, “XXXXXX informed me that XXXXXX stole my horse and great coat, and that the said XXXXXX intended to murder me when opportunity presented and further gave me caution to let no person in my house after dark.”3 If Banneker had been white, he could have taken this information to the sheriff. Rather than report it, he later carefully crossed out all the names in this entry, fearing what might happen should his journal fall into the wrong hands.
Still, in other segments of society, being black could be an asset, albeit sometimes as an oddity. Though no publisher accepted Banneker’s first almanac in 1791, some considered it at length, thinking there might be interest in mathematical calculations performed by an African American. Through George Ellicott, now thirty-eight years old, Banneker’s unpublished almanac came to the attention of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, one of whose members was George’s cousin, the prominent surveyor Andrew Ellicott.
Banneker commenced preparing an almanac for the following year. Andrew Ellicott, meanwhile, started work on his recently received commission to survey the boundary of the newly created District of Columbia. To assist him in this task, he offered a position to his fellow surveyor and cousin, George. George, however, was unable to accept the offer and suggested Benjamin Banneker.
Politics in the eighteenth century being no different than politics now, Andrew Ellicott aimed to protect his posterior before making such a righteous choice. He sought the approval of President Washington’s secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson—a shrewd move, since Jefferson’s views on race were conflicted but his political ambitions were not. Jefferson approved the choice.
The wisdom of Ellicott’s marshaling support soon became evident. During the course of the project, Ellicott lodged at various inns; Banneker slept at the base camp, since few if any local inns would provide accommodations to African Americans. Even in camp, Banneker ate his meals separately from the other members of the engineering corps. Without Jefferson’s approval, Banneker’s very presence on the project may well have been rejected.
Ellicott himself, however, regarded Banneker as a colleague. He placed him in charge of the astronomical instruments and asked him to perform the mathematical calculations. Ellicott supervised the field measurements. The city whose boundaries they were to locate was a square with ten-mile sides, occupying land on both sides of the Potomac River and encompassing the ports of Georgetown on the north bank and Alexandria on the south bank. Today, that part of the original city south of the Potomac is no longer part of Washington, DC, having been returned to Virginia in 1846. (See “Robert M. T. Hunter” in this book.)
Banneker’s work on the survey made him an instant celebrity, since his achievement was of value to people in influential positions. First and foremost were the abolitionists, whose arguments against slavery were greatly strengthened