page_title: Mythology of Benjamin Banneker
section_title: Plan of the City of Washington
hierarchical_section_title: Mythology of Benjamin Banneker / Plan of the City of Washington
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Shirley Graham (1896-1977), later Shirley Graham Du Bois, by Carl Van Vechten, taken July 18, 1946.
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: While Andrew Ellicott and his team were conducting a survey of the boundaries of the future federal district during 1791-1792 (see Boundary Markers of the Original District of Columbia), Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant was preparing a plan for the federal capital city (the City of Washington) (see L'Enfant Plan). The capital city was to occupy a relatively small area bounded by Rock Creek, the Potomac River, the Anacostia River (known at the time as the "Eastern Branch") and the base of the escarpment of the Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line.
  The capital city was to be located at the center of the much larger 100-square-mile (260 km²) federal district, which was known at the time as the "Territory of Columbia" (see Founding of Washington, D.C.). In late February 1792, President George Washington dismissed L'Enfant, who had failed to have his plan published and who was experiencing frequent conflicts with the three Commissioners that Washington had appointed to supervise the planning and survey of the federal district and city.
  A number of undocumented stories connecting Benjamin Banneker with the planning and survey of the federal capital city have appeared over the years. During the late 1900s and early 2000s, historian Silvio Bedini wrote and performed research about Banneker that refuted some of these tales while working in Washington, D.C. for over 40 years at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of History and Technology/National Museum of American History.
  In a 1969 publication, Bedini reported that a story connecting Banneker with the survey and planning of the federal city had appeared within a work that a member of the Ellicott family had edited. The Friends' (Quakers') Book Association published the work in Philadelphia during 1884.
  
  The story stated:
  Major Ellicott selected Benjamin Banneker as his assistant upon this occasion, and it was with his aid that the lines of the Federal Territory, as the District of Columbia was then called, were run.
  It was the work, also of Major Elllicott, under the orders of General Washington, then President of the United States, to locate the sites of the Capitol, President's House, Treasury and other public buildings. In this, also, Banneker was his assistant.
  Bedini noted that writers had repeated and embellished the story, sometimes in conflicting ways. One version of the tale claims that Banneker "made astronomical calculations and implementations" that established points of significance within the city, including those of the White House, the Capitol, the Treasury Building and the "16th Street Meridian" (see White House meridian). Other versions state that Banneker assisted Andrew Ellicott in locating the sites of some or all of those features or "laid out Washington".
  In 1921, Daniel A. P. Murray, an African American serving as an assistant librarian of the Library of Congress, read a paper before the Banneker Association of Washington that connected Banneker with L'Enfant's plan for the capital city. The paper stated:
   ... L'Enfant made a demand that could not be accorded and ... in a fit of high dudgeon gathered all his plans and papers and unceremoniously left. ... Washington was in despair, since it involved a defeat of all of his cherished plans in regard to the "Federal City." This perturbation on his part was quickly ended, however, when it transpired that Banneker had daily for the purposes of calculation and practice, transcribed nearly all L'Enfant's field notes and through the assistance they afforded Mr. Andrew Ellicott, L'Enfant's assistant, Washington City was laid down very nearly on the original lines. ... By this act the brain of the Afro-American is indissolubly linked with the Capital and nation.
  In 1976 (more than 50 years later), Jerome Klinkowitz stated within a book that described the works of Banneker and other early black American writers that Murray's report had initiated a myth about Banneker's career. Klinkowitz noted that Murray had not provided any support for his claim that Banneker had recalled L'Enfant's plan for Washington, D.C. Klinkowitz als
caption: Library of CongressShirley Graham (1946)
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