Maryland State Archives

The 1796 printing of Benjamin Banneker's (1731-1806) Almanac in a late nineteenth or early twentieth century binding. Copy originally held by the Baltimore City Hall Library and later transferred to Department of Legislative Reference Library in Annapolis sometime in the twentieth century (1960s-1970s[?]).

Banneker's editors prefaced this 1796 Almanac with laudatory references to him, such as this excerpt:

Not you ye proud, impute to these the blame
If Afric's sons to genius are unknown,
For Banneker has prov'd they may acquire a name
As bright, as lasting, as your own.

Banneker, a self-educated African-American, made astronomical and tide calculations and weather predictions for his yearly almanacs, which he published from 1792 to 1797. Banneker's almanacs were compared favorable with Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac.