Wave 1: Colonial Inventions (1600s to 1812)
Given that the patent system had not yet fully been adopted in the U.S. governmental bureaucracy, press and media reports as well as colonial diaries are the primary way we learn how inventive early Africans were in becoming instrumental Americans and creating the bedrock institutions of America. Due to the colonial documentation of the needed skills with natural resources that the captured Africans possessed, the role of African medicinal knowledge and ethnobotanical agriculture in building the nation's public health and nutrition cannot be underestimated. Colonial Black geniuses ensured the experiment in democracy - even one that excluded them in practice - succeeded.
MEDICINE
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MEDICINE 〰️
With the arrival of settler-colonists in the Indigenous Americas, public health was a major struggle to the survival of the colonies. Ancient technologies were badly needed, especially for smallpox which outbreaks were deadly in the Americas, where the practice of disease prevention had not taken off like in older civilizations that worshipped smallpox as a deity. These dieties included: T'ou-Shen, Niang-Niang of China, St. Nicasius of Europe, Shapona of Nigeria, and Shitala Mata of India. In the 1700s, colonial Boston was hit with an outbreak of smallpox in 1721 emerging from infected sailors from the British vessel the HMS Seahorse.
Onesimus was an African man who was instrumental in the mitigation of the impact of a smallpox outbreak. In 1706, he was enslaved by Cotton Mather, a Harvard-educated Puritan minister also publicly involved in the Salem Witch Trials. Onesimus introduced inoculation against disease to Mather, which he later wrote about. In 1796, Edward Jenner would be credited with the discovery of a smallpox vaccine, erasing the man who saved hundreds of lives several decades earlier using ancient practices in Africa.
AMERICAN CUISINE
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AMERICAN CUISINE 〰️
The few African Americans who were freedman and who could access literary resources were avid to demonstrate their abilities. African Americans were not considered humans in colonial era of enslavement. One of the major proponents of this lie was founding founder and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, who even thought they had “black blood” and were incapable of reason and scientific thought. Unfortunately, Jefferson was also the first patent commissioner. As a statesman, Thomas Jefferson needed to convince fellow colonists to become and remain a country, despite deep differences. Food was one of the most powerful ways to impress and display diplomacy, which Jefferson became known for. He was a fan of French haute cuisine, but could not afford to employ a French chef to create these delicacies in a foreign land being colonized by their settler society.
Over the years, misinformation has emerged crediting and popularizing Thomas Jefferson with inventions like spaghetti in a 1948 Budweiser advertisement, but it was his brother-in-law's innovation that Jefferson promoted. From 1784-1789, James Hemings - the brother-in-law of Jefferson who once accompanied him as a valet and was inherited through his wife's family - received world-class training in multiple culinary apprenticeships from Monsieur Combeaux and Chateau Chantilly, the household of the Prince de Conde. In addition to being the best-trained chef in America, he was likely the only African American who was bilingual in French and English of his time - a feat he achieved by using his earnings as a chef to obtain lessons.
This colonial Black genius James Hemings first debuted his inventions as American adaptations of French cuisine now considered iconic Americana: ice cream, spaghetti, and macaroni & cheese. All of these happened at the Monticello plantation in Albemarle County near Charlottesville, Virginia. James Hemings was the chef who cooked the meals for the key “Dinner Table Bargain” on June 20, 1790 where Jefferson hosted feuding colonists Alexander Hamilton and James Madison to argue over where the nation’s capital would be located. They decided on the banks of the Potomac River as the "Federal City," later renamed Washington, D.C.
TIME AND SPACE PLANNING
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TIME AND SPACE PLANNING 〰️
In Sluby’s chapter “Early Creative Minds,” the astronomer and inventor Benjamin Banneker is highlighted for three kinds of achievements during this period. In 1753, at 22 years of age, he designed and built a wooden clock that kept accurate time and struck the hours for 20 years. It was the first American-made clock. Building on this interest in time, he was able to predict the solar eclipse in 1789.
In 1791, he worked with Andrew Ellicott and Major Pierre L’Enfant as a surveyor of land as the third member of the team along with Andrew Ellicott Jr. the Chief Surveyor. His incredible memory came in handy when Major L’Enfrant suddenly resigned and departed for France with all the plans for Washington D.C. Banneker saved Washington D.C. by reproducing exact plans from memory. The United States never honored him for this heroic feat, but he was recognized by France and by English Parliament records.
That same year as the Dinner Table Bargain establishing Washington D.C. as the capitol, another Black genius Benjamin Banneker wrote a famous letter publicly challenging Jefferson and even mailed him an unfinished copy of his invention - “an almanac” as proof of Black genius in 1791. From his home in Ellicott's Mills Historic District of Baltimore County, Maryland, he reproduced from memory the entire 1,000+ page publication over the next year. In 1792, Banneker worked with Mr. Joseph Cruckshank of Philadelphia to publish his Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia Almanack and Ephemeris, which he would repeat for five more years.
Both Washington, D.C. and the state of Maryland have multiple place-based opportunities to preserve his legacy – including his farm where he died and is buried in Maryland.