[bhl]

Yeah, if he couldn’t learn to read in 80 years of his life, he was unlikely a genius (IQ 160+) His main talent seemed to be calculating the number of seconds in a date range. Doesn’t say whether he used his talent in bookkeeping etc.

[Jamestown1630]

I don’t pay any attention to ‘IQ’. I think it’s a worthless measurement.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: His main talent seemed to be calculating the number of seconds in a date range.

Actually it was more than that. From the article:

He could ... cal­cu­late the num­ber of grains of corn in a giv­en mass

.... Fuller also count­ed bushels of wheat and devel­oped tech­niques for mea­sur­ing dis­tances and for mul­ti­ply­ing these num­bers to deter­mine long dis­tances, like the diam­e­ter of the Earth’s orbit

.... she uti­lized him on all areas of a farm for land­scap­ing, home repairs, and cal­cu­lat­ing the crops and ani­mals on the farm.

.... With lit­tle instruc­tion, he would have been able to cast up plats of land. He took great notice of the lines of land, which he had seen sur­veyed. He drew just con­clu­sions from facts, sur­pris­ing­ly so, for his oppor­tu­ni­ties.

[AFreeBird]

Reading for the most part was, is not outright forbidden, discouraged. Math on the other hand would have been considered a useful skill for someone who could be ordered to load X bushels of barley onto a wagon.