Note 147 — BENJAMIN BANNEKER, THE NEGRO MATHEMATICIAN AND ASTRONOMER

In another particular this same sketch differs from several others, namely, in locating young Banneker at "an obscure and distant country school" with no mention of the oft-repeated assertion that the school was one attended by both white and colored children. The author of the last-mentioned sketch was evidently not sure of these two statements, and therefore did not include them. In fact, he appears not to have been quite sure of the propriety of submitting any sketch at all of this "free man of color" to the distinguished body constituting the Maryland Historical Society, for there was a clear note of apology in his opening declaration that "A few words may be necessary to explain why a memoir of a free man of color, formerly a resident of Maryland, is deemed of sufficient interest to be presented to the Historical Society." But he justified his effort on the grounds that "no questions relating to our country (are) of more interest than those connected with her colored population"; that that interest had "acquired an absorbing character"; that the presence of the colored population in States where slavery existed "modified their institutions in important particulars," and effected "in a greater or less degree the character of the dominant race"; and "for this reason alone," he said, "the memoir of a colored man, who had distinguished himself in an abstruse science, by birth a Marylander, claims consideration from those who have associated to collect and preserve facts and records relating to the men and deeds of the past."—J. H. B. Latrobe in Maryland Historical Society Publications, I, p. 8.