Banneker himself and his earliest biographers described him as having only African ancestry.(2) McHenry, pp. 185-186. "BENJAMIN BANNEKER, a free Negro, has calculated an Almanack for the ensuing Year, 1792, ... . "This Man is about fifty-nine years in age; he was born in "Baltimore county"; his father was an "African", and his mother, the offspring of "African" parents."(3) Latrobe, p. 6. "His father was a native African, and his mother the child of natives of Africa; so that to no admixture of the blood of the white man was he indebted for his peculiar and extraordinary abilities."</ref> None of Banneker's surviving papers describe a white ancestor or identify the name of his grandmother.