page_title: Mythology of Benjamin Banneker
section_title: Banneker's clock
hierarchical_section_title: Mythology of Benjamin Banneker / Banneker's clock
caption_attribution_description: English: Lydia Maria Child (February 11, 1802 – July 7, 1880) was an American abolitionist, women's rights activist, opponent of American expansionism, Indian rights activist, novelist, and journalist.
context_page_description: According to accounts that began to appear during the 1960s or earlier, a substantial mythology has exaggerated the accomplishments of Benjamin Banneker, who was a free African-American almanac author, surveyor, landowner and farmer who had knowledge of mathematics, astronomy and natural history. Well-known speakers, writers, artists and others have created, repeated and embellished a large number of such questionable reports during the two centuries that have elapsed since Banneker lived.
  Several such urban legends describe Banneker's alleged activities in the Washington, D.C., area around the time that he assisted Andrew Ellicott in the initial survey of the boundaries of the future federal district. Others involve his clock, his astronomical works, his almanacs and his journals. Although part of African-American culture, all lack support by historical evidence. Some are contradicted by such evidence.
context_section_description: In 1845, John Hazelhurst Boneval Latrobe, an American lawyer, inventor and future president of the American Colonization Society, read a Memoir of Benjamin Banneker at a meeting of the Maryland Historical Society. Latrobe's memoir, presented 39 years after Banneker's death, contains the first known account of Banneker's clock. The memoir stated:
  It was at this time, when he (Banneker) was about thirty years of age, that he contrived and made a clock, which proved an excellent time–piece. He had seen a watch, but not a clock, such an article having not yet having found its way into the quiet and secluded valley in which he lived. The watch was therefore his model.
  
  In 1863, the Atlantic Monthly magazine published during the American Civil War a brief biography of Banneker that an American abolitionist minister, Moncure D. Conway, had written. Embellishing Latrobe's account of Banneker's clock, Conway described the timepiece as follows:
  Perhaps the first wonder amongst his comparatively illiterate neighbors was excited, when about the thirtieth year of his age, Benjamin made a clock. It is probable that this was the first clock of which every portion was made in America; it is certain that it was as purely as his own invention as if none had ever been made before. He had seen a watch, but never a clock, such an article not being within fifty miles of him. The watch was his model.
   Conway's biography concluded by stating "... history must record that the most original scientific intellect which the South has yet produced was that of the pure African, Benjamin Banneker."
  In 1865, an American abolitionist, Lydia Maria Child, authored a book intended to be used to teach recently freed African Americans to read and to provide them with inspiration. Child's book stated that Banneker had constructed "the first clock ever made in this country".
  In 1902, Kelly Miller, a professor of mathematics at Howard University, made a similar undocumented claim in a United States Bureau of Education publication. Miller, who later became a professor of sociology and dean of the school's College of Arts and Sciences, stated in his paper that Banneker had in 1770 "constructed a clock to strike the hours, the first to be made in America". In contrast, Philip Lee Phillips, a Library of Congress librarian, more cautiously stated in a 1916 paper read before the Columbia Historical Society in Washington, D.C. that Banneker "is said to have made, entirely with his own hand, a clock of which it is said every portion was made in America."
  In 1919, Carter Woodson wrote in the second edition of his book, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861, that Banneker had "made in 1770 the first clock manufactured in the United States, thereby attracting the attention of the scientific world". In 1921, Benjamin Griffith Brawley, who had earlier worked at Howard University and had served as the first dean of Morehouse College, authored a book entitled A Social History of the American Negro. Repeating Kelly Miller's claim, Brawley's book stated that Banneker had in 1770 "constructed the first clock striking the hours that was made in America."
  In 1929, The Chicago Defender newspaper reported that a speaker at a ceremony dedicating a sundial commemorating Banneker at Howard University had stated that "Banneker made the first clock used in America which was constructed of all American materials". In 1967, William Loren Katz repeated this statement in his book, Eyewitness: The Negro in American History, claiming that Banneker as a teenager "constructed a clock, the first one made entirely with American parts".
  Shirley Graham wrote in her 1949 book, Your Most Humble Servant, that stories saying that Banneker made the first clock constructed in America are "no doubt carelessly written". She went on to write that it was probably quite safe to say that "Banneker made the first clock in Maryland" or perhaps in the southern Atlantic colonies. Without citing any supporting documents written during  Banneker's lifetime, she then claimed that "this at least is what was said abou
caption: Library of Congress
  Lydia Maria Child (circa 1865)
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