By Cecilia Weaver
I first began working with the William & Mary Bray School Lab as a Student Thought Partner in the spring of 2022. At the time, I was a sophomore who had entered college during the fall of 2020, and I was interested in engaging in the research opportunities available on campus. I also wanted to make up for lost time due to remote classes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hearing about the Bray School Lab at its inception has allowed me to witness its incredible growth and play a part in the work that the Lab has been able to produce over the past two and a half years.
During my first year at the Lab, I created an annotated bibliography of sources about the Williamsburg Bray School and the broader history African American education in Williamsburg. As the history of the Bray School was still new to many people in the community, this annotated bibliography provided accessible scholarly and news sources for people who wanted to learn more. My experience with the annotated bibliography provided an incredibly valuable starting point for my future research, giving me a foundation not only of information about the Bray School, but also its broad research potential across institutions and communities.
After my work on the annotated bibliography, I shifted my focus to the Virginia Gazette Project. The goal of this project is to record mentions of enslavers of students at the Bray School within the pages of the Virginia Gazette in an effort to understand the environments that enslaved students were living in. Additionally, this research provides a database of information for future genealogical research about these enslaved individuals and their descendants.
Working with information about Robert Carter Nicholas from the Virginia Gazette, I wrote an essay for the upcoming book, The Williamsburg Bray School: A History Through Records, Reflections, and Rediscovery. In this piece, I reflected on how Robert Carter Nicholas’s ideas for the Williamsburg Bray School were focused on his understanding of its function, finances, and higher-level management, rather than individual student educational progress. This perception of the Bray School underscores one of the purposes that its trustees and elites in the community understood it to be: a financial investment which would serve their interests as Anglicans and enslavers.
Research about institutions can sometimes have a similar bent, where larger political or financial implications overshadow the experiences of individuals. However, the research I have completed here at the Bray School Lab has upended that understanding. While my research has not necessarily centered on studying a specific student, individuals are the ultimate center of my research contributions. With the annotated bibliography, the goal was to provide an accessible community resource, allowing anyone who is interested to learn more about the Williamsburg Bray School, its students, and its legacies. While the Virginia Gazette may be a project that begins with enslavers, that is not its end goal. Instead, these entries paint a picture of the context in which students and the school itself existed. Thus, they provide information about experiences that shaped the lives of each student, along with perceptions of each individual enslaver who shaped the school’s operation. Further, by expanding the research on each of these households, additional genealogical study can be completed based on the associations of different individuals, as reflected in these Gazette advertisements and letters.
My time at the W&M Bray School Lab has given me valuable research experience, but also reinforced my belief that centering the study of history on community is vitally important. Beyond these larger political or financial understandings of the Bray School as an institution, there are the lived experiences of individual students and the perceptions of the school’s mission by those who funded it. Similarly, the Descendant, Williamsburg, and William & Mary Communities exist in conversation with the Lab’s work. Working alongside descendants with the book project and hearing about research they have completed at Family History Day have underscored the value of research completed by and for a community itself and the importance in investing in such a rich resource. Also, my experience recording letters for the Lab’s Voices Project provides greater accessibility to primary sources and gives them new life, allowing me and others to see them in a new way. Collaborating with other student thought partners and Bray Lab staff has been an invaluable experience.
As I end my college education and begin a career in public history, my experience at the W&M Bray School Lab will carry me through future research and educational opportunities. While research for research’s sake can certainly be interesting, its value is exponentially increased once it is made not only available, but also accessible to the public. Further, it is vital that public programming is designed with the interests of the community in mind. The Bray School Lab has continued to highlight the value of such a community history, beginning with those surrounding and attending the school during its operation, and extending to the Williamsburg community today.
Cecilia Weaver graduated in May 2024 with a double major in history and government. She is working as an Interpretation Park Ranger at Boston National Historical Park.