In the early years of the American colonies, it was an accepted practice to trade seven years of indentured servitude as payment for passage to the New World. In 1683, Molly Welsh (or Walsh) made her way from England to Maryland this way, and seven years later she was farming tobacco on her own land in Baltimore County. In 1692, she purchased two slaves directly from a slave ship, one of them named Banne Ka, the son of an African chief. After granting her slaves their freedom, she married Bannaka and together they had four daughters.
Molly and Bannaka's eldest daughter, Mary, married Robert (also a freed slave), and together they took Mary's surname (now Bannaky). In 1731, their son Benjamin Bannaky was born - free. Benjamin's father took great care to provide for his child by purchasing land in Benjamin's name when he was only about 5 years old.
Young Benjamin grew up on the tobacco farm, and was taught to read by his grandmother Molly. Later, when a local school was formed, the schoolteacher changed the spelling of his last name to Banneker.
Banneker proved to be a genius: at the age of 21, he was shown a pocket watch - perhaps for the first time - and because of his fascination with it, the owner, Josef Levi, allowed him to disassemble it for study. After documenting all of the individual parts and reassembling the watch, Benjamin proceeded to carve an enlarged version entirely out of wood, creating the first striking clock made entirely in America.
For the next 35 years, Banneker performed watch and clock repairs and successfully farmed tobacco with sophisticated irrigation techniques. In 1787, he began to study astronomy with the support and encouragement of his new neighbors, George and Joseph Ellicott. The following year, he predicted his first astronomical event - a solar eclipse. He compiled data and published his first work in 1791: Benjamin Bannaker's Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia Almanack and Ephemeris for the Year of Our Lord, 1792; Being Bissextile, or Leap Year, and the Sixteenth Year of American Independence.
That same year, he also wrote to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, trusting that Jefferson was:
"a man far less inflexible in [the] sentiments...of the world; that we [negroes] have long been looked upon with an eye of contempt; and that we have long been considered...scarcely capable of mental endowments."
He included with his letter a copy of his new Almanac, and received a reply from Jefferson stating that:
"nature has given to our black bretheren, talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and...the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence..." "I have taken the liberty of sending your Almanac to Monsieur de Condorcet, Secretary of the Academy of Sciences at Paris...because I considered it as a document to which your whole colour had a right for their justification against the doubts which have been entertained of them."
Subsequently, at president George Washington's suggestion, Banneker was asked by Jefferson to assist the Ellicott brothers' cousin Andrew Ellicott in the survey of the new "Federal Territory", the 100 square mile district on the Potomac River donated by the states of Maryland and Virginia for the new seat of the United States government. The architect in charge of the design of the new city, Pierre Charles l'Enfant, had become frustrated with the commissioners of the project and had resigned, taking all of his papers and maps with him. Banneker recreated l'Enfant's drawings from memory in only two days' time, saving the project from the expense and delay of a new design.
Banneker "the first negro man of science" continued to study the heavens and record his calculations until he died in 1806 at the age of 74. His wooden clock continued to keep time all of his life.