Benjamin Banneker

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 …

…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.