Posted on 09/22/2021 9:05:16 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Born in Africa somewhere between present-day Liberia and Benin, Fuller was enslaved and shipped to America in 1724 at the age of 14, eventually becoming the legal property of Presley and Elizabeth Cox of Alexandria, Virginia. The Coxes owned 16 slaves, and appeared to value Fuller the most; he expressed gratitude for not being sold.
He did not understand the art of reading or writing, but by a marvellous faculty was able to perform the most difficult calculations.
Stories of his astonishing abilities abounded through the Eastern seaboard. His skill was even used as proof that enslaved Blacks were equal to whites in intelligence, which fueled some pro-abolitionist discussion.
Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia, Penn., in a letter addressed to a gentleman residing in Manchester, Eng., says that hearing of the phenomenal mathematical powers of “Negro Tom,” he, in company with other gentlemen passing through Virginia, sent for him. One of the gentlemen asked him how many seconds a man of seventy years, some odd months, weeks, and days, had lived, he gave the exact number in a minute and a half. The gentleman took a pen, and after some figuring told Tom he must be mistaken, as the number was too great. “‘Top, massa!” exclaimed Tom, “you hab left out de leap-years!” And sure enough, on including the leap-years in the calculation, the number given by Tom was correct.
“When Fuller was about 70 years old, He was visited by William Hartshorn and Samuel Coates,” says Mr. Needles, “of this city (Philadelphia), and gave correct answers to all their questions such as, How many seconds there are in a year and a half? In two minutes he answered 47,304,000. How many seconds in seventy years, seventeen days, twelve hours? In one minute and a half, 2,110,500,800.”
Despite Fuller's perfect answers, it appeared to Hartshorne and Coates that his mental abilities must have once been greater when he was much younger. They wrote:
"He was already gray-headed, and exhibited several other marks of the weakness of old age. He had worked hard upon a farm during the whole of life but had never been intemperate in the use of spirituous liquors. He spoke with great respect of his mistress, and mentioned in a particular manner his obligations to her for refusing to sell him, which she had been tempted to by offers of large sums of money from several persons."
That he was a prodigy, no one will question. He was the wonder of the age. The following appeared in several newspapers at the time of his death. Present day thinking is that Fuller learned to calculate in Africa before he was brought to the United States as a slave. Supporting evidence for this comes from a passage written by Thomas Clarkson in 1788 describing the purchase of African slaves:
It is astonishing with what facility the African brokers reckon up the exchange of European goods for slaves. One of these brokers has ten slaves to sell , and for each of these he demands ten different articles. He reduces them immediately by the head to bars, coppers, ounces… and immediately strikes the balance. The European, on the other hand, takes his pen, and with great deliberation, and with all the advantage of arithmetic and letters, begin to estimate also. He is so unfortunate, as to make a mistake: but he no sooner errs, than he is detected by this man of inferior capacity, whom he can neither deceive in the name or quality of his goods, nor in the balance of his account.
Despite Fuller’s calculating abilities he was never taught to read or write and again this is evidence that he did not learn to calculate while in the United States. When someone who had witnessed his calculating abilities remarked that it was a pity he had not been educated, Fuller replied: ‘It is best I got no learning; for many learned men be great fools.’
Related from earlier today
Thinking About Race and IQ
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3997257/posts
I wonder if any of those offers to purchase him came from abolitionists that might have freed him.
Ping
He is a savant…..some movie about this,.
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Movie “Rain Man “
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Interesting article.
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This seems to my mind to have relevance to the black women who were mathematicians for NASA in the early days, and was the basis of the motion picture named, “DARK FIGURES”.
“Fuller learned to calculate in Africa before he was brought to the United States as a slave”
From people in his tribal society?
My point: this was an innate skill to know eternal abstractions, gifted by God to a brilliant man. It wasn’t a societal paradise that gave him this.
Funny how the Enlightenment/freemasonic/Frankfurt School modernists will always try to hide the effects of the Holy Trinity and give credit to man.
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