ENTRY

Thomas Fuller (ca. 1710–1790)

SUMMARY

Thomas Fuller was an enslaved man who earned renown at the end of his life for his ability to calculate numbers in his head. Born in West Africa and sold into slavery in Virginia, he labored on a farm nearly his entire life. He never learned to read or write in English and received no education in America. Nevertheless, in his later years he impressed others with his ability to quickly perform large calculations in his head. Dr. Benjamin Rush, of Philadelphia, helped publicize Fuller’s feats, and the antislavery movement used him and others as examples of how enslaved African Americans were capable of learning. Fuller died in 1790.

Benjamin Rush

Much of what is known about Fuller’s life comes from two sources: 1) a report on his mathematical abilities prepared by Dr. Benjamin Rush and published in the American Museum, or Universal Magazine in 1788; and 2) his obituary, which appeared in the Boston newspaper Columbian Centinel, on December 29, 1790. The latter lists his age at the time of his death as eighty, making his birth year about 1710. Describing Fuller as “very black,” the paper reported that he “was brought to this country at the age of fourteen and was sold as a slave with many of his unfortunate countrymen.” Rush noted that Fuller was a native of Africa and that “he had worked hard upon a farm during the whole of his life.”

At some point Fuller was purchased by Presley and Elizabeth Cox, who farmed 232 acres of land four miles west of Alexandria. He remained there the rest of his life, never learning to read or write and receiving no instruction in arithmetic. According to Rush, Fuller told two men who came to interview him late in his life that he taught himself “by counting ten, and that when he was able to count an hundred, he thought himself (to use his own words) ‘a very clever fellow.'” He then counted “the number of hairs in a cow’s tail, which he found to be 2872.” Fuller also told the men that he was grateful to Elizabeth Cox, whose husband had died in 1782, for not selling him, “which she had been tempted to do by offers of large sums of money, from several curious persons.”

Rush reports at length on the particulars of Fuller’s calculations. Two white men, both Quakers from Pennsylvania, traveled to the Cox farm and posed several problems for him to solve, including how many seconds are in a year and half (47,304,000) and how many seconds are in seventy years, seventeen days, and twelve hours (2,210,500,800). One of the men argued that the second solution was too large, but Fuller reminded him of leap years. A third question involved the increase of farm animals, and all questions were solved correctly, within a minute or two, and without the aid of paper or pencil. On another occasion Fuller performed calculations for two different men, one of whom called it a “pity” that he had not been better educated. Fuller replied that “many learned men be great fools.” The scholar William F. Mugleston has acknowledged the possibility that Fuller had savant syndrome, but he also argues that no evidence beyond Fuller’s specific arithmetic skills supports this. John Fauvel and Paulus Gerdes further argue that the evidence doesn’t support the idea that Fuller had a low IQ, and they point to “a rich tradition of mental calculations among illiterate people” in Africa.

New Travels in the United States of America.

Fuller died in 1790, and his story was often related in the context of antislavery literature, which sought to demonstrate the mental fitness of African Americans. In New Travels in the United States of America, published in English in 1792, the Frenchman J. P. Brissot de Warville paired Fuller’s story with that of James Derham, an enslaved man who learned to practice medicine in New Orleans. “These instances prove, without doubt,” Brissot de Warville wrote, “that the capacity of the negroes may be extended to any thing; that they have only need of instruction and liberty.”

MAP
TIMELINE
ca. 1710
Thomas Fuller is born, probably in West Africa.
ca. 1724
Thomas Fuller is kidnapped in West Africa and sold into slavery in Virginia.
November 14, 1788
Dr. Benjamin Rush, of Philadelphia, writes an account on the mathematical abilities of the Virginia slave Thomas Fuller.
December 29, 1790
The Columbian Centinel newspaper in Boston publishes an obituary for Thomas Fuller, an enslaved man in Alexandria known for his mathematical abilities.
FURTHER READING
  • Fauvel, John, and Paulus Gerdes. “African slave and calculating prodigy: bicentenary of the death of Thomas Fuller.” Historia Math 17, no. 2 (May 1990): 141–151.
  • Mugleston, W. F. “Thomas Fuller.” American National Biography. Volume 8, edited by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, 566. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
  • Pejsa, Jane H. “A Wizard in Any Age.” Christian Science Monitor, February 12, 1980.
CITE THIS ENTRY
APA Citation:
Wolfe, Brendan. Thomas Fuller (ca. 1710–1790). (2020, December 07). In Encyclopedia Virginia. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/fuller-thomas-ca-1710-1790.
MLA Citation:
Wolfe, Brendan. "Thomas Fuller (ca. 1710–1790)" Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, (07 Dec. 2020). Web. 28 Sep. 2023
Last updated: 2023, September 06
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