BTW, there is actually a book about Benjamin Banneker’s grandparents. Molly Bannaky. Not brilliant, but a nice book based on an interesting story about an biracial family in colonial America.

Molly was an indentured servant who took her money after she served her term, and claimed some land. Bought two men off the Middle Passage to help her farm it. One of them explained that he could not work for anyone but himself, since he was a prince, so Molly married him (making the property his under English law), and they raised two daughters. Story is that when the older girl was of an age to marry she went back to the Boston slave market looking for a son-in-law. (Heck, whatever works…) Her grandson was one of the surveyors who worked on the project laying out DC.