The Fabric of America by Andro Linklater Read Free Book Online Page A

fault.”
    The depth of Patterson’s influence was apparent when the Revolution broke out, and in defiance of his family’s pacifist beliefs, Ellicott volunteered for military service. By then the entire Ellicott clan—Joseph, his two brothers with their families, and their children’s families—had moved south to Maryland in search of a site where they could build new, more powerful mills. Barely ten miles from the rapidly growing port of Baltimore, they found the perfect position on the fast-running Patapsco River, and the successful flour-milling operation they set up would eventually grow into Ellicott City, now part of the conurbation of Greater Baltimore.
    Newly married to Sarah Brown, invariably known as Sally, the dark-haired daughter of a Bucks County farmer, Ellicott joined the clan reluctantly. “ [Pennsylvania] is my native country ,” he used to insist, “and I love it above any other.” His time on the Patapsco was cut short by his decision to serve in the Maryland militia. This evidently caused such a painful rift in the family that in 1779 Ellicott chose to move away with his wife to live in Baltimore. In the end he was not called upon to fight, but his father died before they could be reconciled, and by the time peace came, Ellicott had made a reputation in a quite different field from milling.
    In October 1780 the
Maryland Journal
announced the publication of a pamphlet with the compendious title of
The Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North-Carolina Almanack, And Ephemeris, For the Year of our
Lord, 1781
. Below this came a cover line stating, “The Astronomical Part of this Almanack was calculated by the ingenious Andrew Ellicott, Esq; of Baltimore-Town.”
    Almost from their first appearance in 1639, almanacs were, in the words of a critic, “ the most despised, most prolific, most indispensable of books, which every man uses, and no man praises .” Their popularity came from telling people what they needed to know. Weather forecasts, the times that the sun rose and set, and the dates of the full moon were mixed in with the sort of useful wisdom about romance and good manners that would once have been passed on by word of mouth. Old folk sayings such as “Where there’s Marriage without Love, there will be Love without Marriage” and “Fish & Visitors stink in three days” were retailed, as though new minted, in Benjamin Franklin’s
Poor Richard’s Almanac
, earning him a name for sagacity, not to mention sales of ten thousand copies a year.
    The
Maryland Almanack
followed the usual pattern, but Ellicott’s ephemeris, literally a calendar showing the predicted movements of the stars, planets, and moon through the year, was exceptional in the detail it offered. The times of sunrise and sunset were exact enough to set an unreliable clock by, and those who wanted to travel by the light of a full moon, like those who believed the weather turned at the new moon, could find the information they needed. But there was more esoteric information, the positions of all the known planets at different times of the year, eclipses of Jupiter’s moons, and the longitude of Baltimore.
    The following year Ellicott felt confident enough to produce on his own
The United States Almanack for the Year of our Lord 1782
, which, coupling science with patriotism, he explained was also
the Second after Leap-Year and the Sixth Year of American Independence
. Letting rip with the astronomy, he not only offered the usual “motions of the sun and moon, the true places and aspects of the eight planets, the rising and setting of the sun, and the rising, setting, southing and age of the moon,” but a forthcoming transit of Mercury across the face of the sun and, what could only have been of interest to the most expert navigators, “lunations, conjunctions, [and] eclipses.” Many of these figures were based on calculations