M&D-related book reviewed

[pynchonoid]

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-DC at h-net.msu.edu (February, 2003)

Charles A. Cerami. _Benjamin Banneker: Surveyor,
Astronomer,
Publisher, Patriot_. New York: John Wiley and Sons,
2002. xiii + 257
pp. Appendices, bibliographical references, index.
$24.95 (cloth),
ISBN 0-471-38752-5.

Reviewed for H-DC by Winfield Swanson
<winfields at earthlink.net>,
Freelance Writer and Editor, Washington, D.C.

Foiling the Arsonists

To the ten books he has already written, Charles
Cerami, a former
editor of Kiplinger Washington Publications and an
economist, now
adds his masterful biography of Benjamin Banneker
(1731-1804).
Cerami has gleaned the facts of Banneker's life from a
scant
historical record consisting of local archives,
correspondence, a
few journals, reminiscences, and an earlier biography
(Shirley
Graham's 1949 _Your Most Humble Servant_).  He has
interwoven his
tale with enough historical information as well as
social and
political context for the reader to readily understand
the relative
influence of these factors on Banneker's life along
with the
magnitude of his achievements.  These facets include
George
Washington's political genius and challenges; race and
racism in the
eighteenth century; astronomy; the building of
America's capital
city; and a number of Banneker's more famous
contemporaries.  The
book contains eighteen chapters and ends with two
appendixes--one on
Banneker's probable Dogon ancestors in Africa and one
on Benjamin
Franklin and his almanac--source notes for each
chapter, a
bibliography, and an index.

Banneker's grandmother, Molly Welsh, was a dairy maid
in England
accused of stealing a pail of milk she had
accidentally spilled. She
could have been executed for the presumed crime, but
was instead
transported to the North American colonies.  In 1683,
she wound up
in Annapolis, Maryland, indentured for seven years to
an honorable
tobacco farmer who released her with fifty acres of
arable land near
Elkridge, Maryland and a small amount of cash, which
she used to
purchase two slaves.  One turned out to be of royal
heritage,
perhaps from the Dogon people, who called himself
Banneka. After
several years, when the three had established a small
farm, Mary
freed Banneka and married him.  A devoted couple, they
eventually
had four daughters, but Banneka died before he was
fifty.

Their daughter Mary either married a slave and freed
him, or married
a former slave. Regardless, this man accepted the name
Robert
Banneky, and on November 9, 1731, Benjamin Banneker
was born.
Benjamin's intellect was recognized from the beginning
and by the
age of six he was helping neighboring farmers with
their accounts.
Methodical and analytical, he kept a journal for most
of his life,
recording his thoughts, ideas, and dreams, in addition
to practical
farming information.  He analyzed farming and broke it
into
thirty-six distinct steps; not surprisingly, the
Banneker farm was
known for its fine crops.

Between 1759 and the early 1770s, Banneker underwent
some
life-altering change that caused him to stop writing,
except for the
recording of his dreams. An early biographer assigned
the cause to a
disappointed love affair; however, Cerami's theory,
although less
romantic, seems more likely: though free, Banneker
recognized the
limitations of his possibilities as an uneducated
black farmer
living in a backwater, rural slave society. A turning
point came,
however, when he met the Ellicotts.

In 1772, the Ellicotts, a well-to-do Quaker family of
farmers who
had never owned slaves, moved to the Elkridge area and
soon began
building millworks and fitting them out with
machinery.  Fascinated,
Banneker spent more and more time watching the
progress. Eventually
he met George Ellicott, the son of Revolutionary War
Major Andrew
Ellicott III. Ellicott had received an excellent
formal education,
was a prodigious amateur scientist and astronomer, and
owned a large
library.  Recognizing a kindred spirit, he readily
lent his books to
Banneker, and the two exchanged and discussed ideas
for the rest of
Banneker's life (Ellicott was more than twenty years
younger).

Banneker's genius came to light in many ways. Banneker
took apart a
pocket watch and, after studying the works, in 1753
made a wooden
clock, which ran well for at least twenty years.  In
the 1780s,
Ellicott leant Banneker a copy of Gibson's _Treatise
of Practical
Surveying_, from which he mastered surveying.
Banneker's real love,
however, was astronomy, and he spent vast amounts of
time watching
the night sky.  Another indication of Banneker's
genius was his
theory that each of the stars is a central sun and
that many have
planets circling them.  It was a revolutionary idea
and Banneker
worked it out in isolation from other thinkers and
with minimal
equipment.

In 1790, when Banneker was almost sixty, Congress
granted President
George Washington the power to choose a location for a
permanent
national capital. Washington selected a ten-mile
square site in
Virginia and Maryland that was named the District of
Columbia in
September, 1791.  To survey the site, he named the
best surveyor he
knew and trusted, Andrew Ellicott III.  Part of the
agreement
stipulated that Ellicott could choose his own staff;
as principal
assistant to survey the city, Ellicott chose Benjamin
Banneker,
based on an assessment of his talent and character.
The job of
drawing the four ten-mile boundary lines entailed
crossing rivers
and slogging through as well as camping in miles of
overgrown,
wooded, rocky, swampy wilderness to drive markers into
the ground.
Only by aligning the markers with the stars could the
surveyors be
certain that neither Virginia nor Maryland gave more
land to the
project than each had promised.  For this, Banneker's
knowledge of
astronomy was critical, and it meant that, in addition
to the
hardships of surveying during the day, the
sixty-year-old was awake
most nights for more than two months. Banneker then
declared that
his services were no longer needed and returned to his
farm, eager
to work on new projects.

One of Banneker's longtime ambitions had been to write
an almanac, a
guide that not only published the alignment of the
stars and the
timing of the tides for the coming year, but also
offered practical
advice, recipes, and humor.  The first issue of
_Banneker's Almanac_
was published in 1791, and it continued to appear
annually until
1797.

Throughout his life, Banneker had declined to allow
abolitionists to
use him as an example to promote the end of slavery.
However, after
completing the survey and his almanac, Banneker
apparently changed
his mind.  Perhaps with encouragement from the
Ellicotts, Banneker
sent Thomas Jefferson a 10,000-word letter pointing
out the
discrepancies between the Declaration of
Independence's assertion of
the equality of all men and the institution of
slavery. He
encouraged Jefferson and other national leaders to
devote their
efforts to end slavery and "to wean yourselves from
those narrow
prejudices," and "Put your Souls in their Souls'
stead" (p. 166).
Banneker's letter, soon made public, exposed him to
physical
violence from pro-slavery Marylanders, some of whom
occasionally
vandalized Banneker's farm or fired shots at his
cabin.

These three accomplishments--Banneker's participation
in the survey
of the capital city, the publication of his first
almanac, and his
letter to Jefferson along with Jefferson's reply--made
1791
Banneker's defining year, his _annus mirabilis_.

Benjamin Banneker died on October 6, 1806.  Two days
later, while he
was being buried, arsonists burned his cabin to the
ground and with
it most of his papers and journals and his wooden
clock.  The fire
burned manifestations of Banneker's genius and of his
original and
independent thinking, hindered biographical research
and writing,
and generally impeded recognition of the
accomplishments of a
colonial genius.  Not until the early 1970s was there
a small public
funding in Maryland to memorialize Banneker's
remarkable career.  In
the mid-1980s the Baltimore County Department of
Recreation and
Parks purchased the former Banneker Farmstead and
surrounding land
in Oella, outside Ellicott City, and established the
Benjamin
Banneker Historical Park.  Now, nearly two hundred
years later,
Charles Cerami has foiled the arsonists.  Historians
had never
completely lost sight of Banneker (for example, the
Maryland
Historical Society sponsored lectures on him in the
late 1800s and
early 1900s), but now, as evidenced by the number of
sites that can
be found on the Web, interest in this colonial genius
has renewed.
At the same time, Banneker's only other full-length
biography,
Shirley Graham's 1949 book, is usually dismissed as a
"romanticized
biography."  Cerami's biography is a welcome and long
overdue
addition to this sparse record.

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