Inside a 1760 school for black children lies a complicated history of slavery and resilience

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — A Virginia museum has nearly completed renovations to the nation’s oldest surviving school for black children, where hundreds of mostly enslaved students learned to read a curriculum that justified slavery.

The Colonial Williamsburg Museum also identified more than 80 children who lined the pine wood benches in the 1760s.

These include 5-year-old Aberdeen, who was enslaved by a saddle and harness maker. Bristol and George, ages 7 and 8, were owned by a doctor. Phoebe, age 3, was owned by local taverns.

Another student, Isaac Bee, later emancipated himself. In newspaper advertisements calling for his capture, his slave warned that Bee “can read.”

The museum is scheduled to dedicate the Williamsburg Bray School on Friday and plans to open it to the public in the spring. Colonial Williamsburg tells the story of Virginia’s colonial capital through interpreters and hundreds of restored buildings.

The Cape Cod-style house was built in 1760 and still includes much of the original wood and brick. It will anchor a complicated story about race and education, but also resistance to the American Revolution.

The school rationalized slavery through religion and encouraged children to accept their fate as God’s plan. Yet literacy also gave them greater freedom of action. Students then shared what they learned with family members and other enslaved people.

“We are not shy about the fact that this was a pro-slavery school,” said Maureen Elgersman Lee, director of William & Mary’s Bray School Lab, a partnership between the university and museum.

However, she said that in the 21st century, school takes on a different meaning.

“It’s a story of resilience and resistance,” Lee said. “And I put Bray School’s resilience on a continuum that leads us to today.”

To emphasize this point, the lab has searched for descendants of students with some success.

They include Janice Canaday, 67, who is also the museum’s African-American community engagement manager. Her lineage goes back to the disciples of Elisha and Mary Jones.

“It grounds you,” said Canaday, who grew up feeling little connection to history. “That is where your power lies. And that’s what gives you strength – knowing what your family has been through.”

The Bray School was established in Williamsburg and other colonial towns at the behest of founding father Benjamin Franklin. He was a member of a London-based Anglican charity named after Thomas Bray, an English clergyman and philanthropist.

Bray School was unique for its time. Although Virginia waited until the 19th century to enact anti-literacy laws, white leaders in much of colonial America prohibited the education of enslaved people out of fear that literacy would encourage them to seek freedom.

A white Williamsburg school teacher, widow Ann Wager, taught approximately 300 to 400 students aged 3 to 10. The school closed with her death in 1774.

The school building became a private home before being incorporated into the growing William & Mary campus. The building was relocated and expanded for various purposes, including student housing.

Historians identified this structure in 2020 using the scientific method of examining tree rings in the wood. Last year it was transported to Colonial Williamsburg, which includes parts of the original city.

The museum and university focused on restoring the school building, examining the curriculum and finding descendants of former students.

The lab was able to link some people to the Jones and Ashby families, two free black households where students at the school lived, said Elizabeth Drembus, the lab’s genealogist.

However, these efforts faced significant challenges: most enslaved people were stripped of their identities and separated from their families, so limited records exist. And only the three-year school plans survived.

Drembus talks to the region’s inhabitants about their family histories and backward work. He also looks through 18th-century land and mortgage registers, tax documents and slave diaries.

“When you’re talking about studying people who were formerly enslaved, the records were kept very differently because they weren’t considered people,” Drembus said.

Reviewing the curriculum just got easier. The English charity cataloged the books it sent to schools, said Katie McKinney, assistant curator of maps and prints at the museum.

The materials include a small spelling primer, a copy of which was in Germany, starting with the alphabet and progressing to syllables, e.g. “Beg leg meg peg.”

Students were also provided with a more refined spelling book bound in sheepskin, as well as the Book of Common Prayer and other Christian texts.

In the meantime, the school building was mostly restored. About 75% of the original floor remains, allowing visitors to walk where the children and teacher once set foot.

Canaday, whose family roots go back to two Bray school students, wondered during a recent visit whether any of the children “felt safe here, felt loved.”

Canaday noted that Teacher Wager was the mother of at least two children.

“Did some of her motherhood translate into what she showed these children?” Canaday said. “There are times when we forget to follow the rules and humanity takes over. I wonder how many times this has happened in these spaces.”