by Emily Muscolina

Conducting first-hand research on the Williamsburg Bray School is an opportunity unique to William & Mary and Colonial Williamsburg, and vital to the educational missions of both institutions. Although I have only been volunteering at the W&M Bray School Lab for roughly a year, my awareness of it began much earlier.

I first learned about the Williamsburg Bray School in the summer of 2022. That summer, I was a high school student in the National Institute of American History & Democracy (NIAHD) Pre-College Program in American History. Our role as students gave us the privilege of literally seeing research unfold.

My class visited the Bray-Digges House, still located at that time on William & Mary’s campus. This building, which had been confirmed as the original Bray school two summers before, was fenced off near an empty lot. To the passerby, it resembled an abandoned building. I remember the excitement I felt upon approaching it. I couldn’t believe that I was experiencing historical discovery firsthand, and for such an important topic. The building was gutted inside, its frame and brick openly exposed. It felt adventurous to walk up the rickety stairs in anticipation of finding the architectural miracle—a couple of tiny fingerprints in the brick—creating an enduring human connection between the 21^st century and the 18^th-century hands who shaped the building’s history.

Not so far down the street was the original site of the school. Here, discoveries were also being made in archaeology. Our class crammed into the small yard of William & Mary’s Brown Hall (now Gates Hall), where square holes were dug into the dirt. Over the years since then, this dirt has continued to reveal secrets that had been buried for over 250 years, giving us insight into the real lives of the children who attended the school and others who lived on the site many years after.

The magnitude of the historical implications that the Bray School offers stuck with me, convincing me to join the Bray School Lab in early 2025. The Williamsburg Bray School Initiative is a fully-fledged partnership of discovery between William & Mary and Colonial Williamsburg, and is, at its heart, a community project. This project brings together architectural historians, archaeologists, Bray School descendants, academic and public historians, college students, K-12 teachers, and visitors, among many, many others. Here, history is literally made for everyone.

~

An interesting thought occurred to me a year ago: What percentage of the Black population was literate in the Early Republic and antebellum United States? The answer to this question would have many implications. Considering the importance of the printing press in early America, literacy gave individuals more agency of their own. Literacy enabled people to make sense of the world around them and to act accordingly. Especially during the Age of Revolution, new ideas of human rights were circulated across the Atlantic World through the written word. People involved in this literature-fueled discussion became part of the conversation of liberty, thus politicizing literacy and education. Politically, education is fundamental to securing and maintaining freedom. Literacy is one of these pathways to freedom, making it a key tool to resist slavery.

When I began volunteering, I was invited to work on the Lab’s new project to map the literacy of enslaved Virginians. I was fortunate that the task I was assigned would help to answer my question. However, I was surprised to learn that there had not been more research conducted on the topic of early African American literacy. Because literacy is a pathway to freedom, I expected it to be more researched. The Bray School gave me an opportunity to give attention to an important topic as well as conduct quantitative and qualitative research on a question I am curious about.

The Bray School Lab’s current research on literacy consists of sifting through collections that may have relevant information. The collections vary in type and format. Personally, I have read the WPA Virginia Slave Narratives and portions of the Virginia Gazette database. Currently, I am sorting through the 1869 book Education of the Negro: History of Schools for the Colored Populations. This source is particularly interesting because of its publication date soon after the ratification of the 13^th Amendment, as well as its length of nearly 300 pages. A lot of data can be found in this source, but I have been finding it helpful to cross-reference with more up-to-date scholarly sources to confirm literacy.

There are currently 175 student-generated entries concerning enslaved Virginians in the 18^th and 19^th century that the Lab is now vetting. Many reports of literacy come from runaway ads. Besides those ads, there are a fair number of self-reports made through collected oral histories and slave narratives. These reports have a common denominator: they are collected by white people. Knowing who is telling the story signals to us the historical limitations of our research. In this case, education differentiates literate black people in white perspectives since black education directly challenged white supremacy in early America due to the potential freedoms it offered.

The Bray School Lab’s current literacy mapping project is essential to understanding the degrees of freedom in Virginia. I am excited to see the results of the project so that we can better understand for whom and how liberty could be used in a time of extreme oppression.

Emily Muscolina ’28 is a William & Mary sophomore majoring in history. She has a concentration in Early American history with a goal to continue her studies in graduate school. Emily is currently involved in NIAHD’s public history program and is honing her research and teaching skills to share complex histories.

by Juanita Graham

Since I graduated from William  & Mary, a lot of information has been brought forth, via the college and Colonial Williamsburg, that pertains to the lives of persons of color. I appreciate the effort that has gone into expanding the general population’s knowledge about the often-overlooked people who worked and lived in the Williamsburg area.

As a person of color with a love for genealogy, I enjoy making connections between the past and the present, in order to bring enlightenment to the future. As a word artist, I also enjoy pulling words together to tell a story of those connections. After hearing Dr. Maureen Elgersman Lee present, “The Williamsburg Bray School and Its Scholars, 1760-1774,” on April 21,2025, my two joys of genealogy and writing collided. The result of the collision was a poem centered around the findings that were elaborated on during her engaging presentation. I entitled it, “My Musings of a Grown-up Bray School Scholar.”

The talk she gave stirred up a myriad of feelings, thoughts and questions for me, and as happens so often, my expression of all of those things came out in a poem.  It reflects my feelings, thoughts and questions … spoken as the potential musings of a grown-up Bray School Scholar.  In my imagination, I heard an adult Bray School Scholar speaking my thoughts. I heard my questions being asked and my feelings being expressed in the voice of a grown-up Hannah, George, Isaac Bee, Phoebe, Dolly, Edmund or Nancy. (These are just a few of the names of students that are recorded.)  I don’t know for certain if they would have wanted to know all of the same things because I recognize my thoughts and questions have the influence of me being a Gen X’er, but I’d like to believe that perhaps they shared at least one of my musings.

My Musings of a Grown-Up Bray School Scholar
Juanita Graham – April 25, 2025

How I was viewed I came to learn,
Was based on who was looking and why.
The varied perspectives of how I was seen,
Changed with the mind that was behind the eye.

Pupil …
Child …
Chattel …
Experiment … so some tended to think.

Investment …
Resilience …
A soul and an ancestor … 
With both a divine and genetic link.

As a pupil I was expected to learn,
Then to share what I knew.
But I was not expected to use my knowledge,
To elevate my station, or to expand my reasoning as I grew.

I was to study my letters
So, I could learn to read the prayers.
So that my soul could be saved, 
And I could gain freedom … once I climbed the heavenly stairs.

Now, I was told I would stay enslaved,
My freedom wouldn’t be on this side.
Hence, I wasn’t to get no ideas about breaking free,
Because they would surely have my hide.

For you see, I was also considered to be chattel ...
Isn’t that strange ... to be "a possession" with a soul?
A soul worth saving, that was in a body not worth freeing - 
Liberation wasn’t the goal.

Which made me wonder if teaching us about the Lord,
Was really about fulfilling a Christian obligation.
Or was it to indoctrinate and to foster dependency and gratitude,
Thus, intensifying the process of subjugation.
 
You know, I was also puzzled and would like to ask …
Why didn’t the spiritual messages apply to you too?
Because you definitely did unto me,
What I know you would not have allowed to be done unto you.

That's not to say the religious teaching
Didn't help in some valuable ways.
It helped give me strength to make it through. 
It also helped me keep calm - reminding me ... God repays.

Now, don’t get me wrong,
There were some kind and compassionate people involved,
Who didn’t see me as a school experiment … 
Or just as a return on investment issue to be resolved.
 
However, regardless of whether I was seen as a person … or not,
I rejected the contrived idea that my natural ordained condition was that of a slave.
I have always been a person with core-deep resiliency, 
Who will have a legacy that will live long after I am buried in my grave.

I don’t know them, 
But I know in the future there will be descendants connected to me,
Who will proudly embrace me for who I am, 
Even celebrating that I am a part of their rich and layered ancestry.

So, as far as the return of investment goes, 
By your criteria, I don't think it worked out so well for you.
But, by my standards of having my story live on,
It will be a future generation’s powerful blessing that will continue … and continue…and continue.
© Juanita Graham, 8/2025

Author Juanita Graham has a strong connection to the Williamsburg area.  She is an Associate Minister at the historic First Baptist Church in Williamsburg, an alumna of William & Mary, a member of the Advisory Board for the Let Freedom Ring Foundation, a board member of the Williamsburg Book Festival, and the Director of Outreach Service for a local service-based non-profit organization.

by Tyler Lewis

Throughout Summer 2025, I had the opportunity to work as an intern for the W&M Bray School Lab with Genealogist Elizabeth Drembus, as part of the Office of Strategic Cultural Partnerships’ Cultural Heritage Immersion Program (CHIP). I engaged in genealogical research for three Bray School students: Squire of the Philip Johnson household as well as Hannah and Sarah of the Robert Carter Nicholas (RCN) household. These research endeavors were truly like a roller coaster that took the story of the scholars and their enslaved communities far beyond Williamsburg. Moreover, I recorded the names of every enslaved individual in the Johnson and Nicholas households to grasp a better understanding of their enslaved communities.

Squire and the Philip Johnson Household

In 1765, Squire attended the Williamsburg Bray School, with Colonel Philip Johnson listed as his enslaver. Out of the three scholars that I researched, Squire had the most consistent paper trail. Legal documents and tax records placed him in the households of Philip Johnson and Sarah Johnson Lester (Johnson’s daughter) from the 1760s to 1792. While conducting this research, I wondered if there was something about Squire—either his skills, a connection to the Johnson family, or a high level of trust from the Johnsons—that made him seem worthy of receiving an education or remaining in the family.   This is of particular note, since Philip Johnson was heavily in debt from the 1760s up to his death in 1789. Johnson and his trustees regularly advertised auctions and hiring out of enslaved people in the Virginia Gazette newspapers. We can only imagine how Squire felt while constantly facing separation from his relatives and other members of his enslaved community. Johnson shuffled or sold his enslaved people throughout numerous Tidewater and Piedmont counties. Squire’s Bray School instruction in reading and spelling would have enabled him to read about the annual divisions and sales taking place within his community.

Hannah, Sarah, and the Robert Carter Nicholas Household

In 1762, Hannah attended the Williamsburg Bray School as a student (aged around 7 years old) from the Robert Carter Nicholas household. Unfortunately, Hannah was the most elusive of the three scholars, as the only other definitive supporting document is Nicholas’ 1765 letter to Reverend John Waring of the Bray Associates in London. In the letter, Nicholas complained that despite Hannah attending the Bray School for three years, she turned out to be a “sad jade” amidst his attempts to reform her. I interpreted the letter as Hannah’s education transforming her from a passive recipient to one who courageously developed her sense of self. Meanwhile, Nicholas lamented that he lost control of Hannah and how she defied the school’s purpose (in Nicholas’ perspective) of indoctrinating Black children to embrace their fate in bondage.

In 1769, Sarah attended the Bray School as another student from the Robert Carter Nicholas household. Bruton Parish Baptism records describe Sarah’s family unit, with Lucy as her mother and Caesar as her younger brother. Sarah’s story also reveals many complexities regarding slavery, in terms of her tasks and who exactly enslaved her. By the 1780s, Sarah and her family labored on Nicholas’ Westham Plantation in Henrico County. However, Nicholas’ 1780 will contained a clause that divided all enslaved people at Westham who worked in the house between his sons Lewis and Philip, while his estate would continue to enslave those in the fields. Henrico tax records only list Nicholas’ estate without Sarah, yet she appears in court records discussing the enslaved people from Westham who were partitioned to Nicholas’ sons. This discrepancy leads me to believe that Sarah conducted domestic tasks while Lucy and Caesar cultivated cash crops.

Researching Hannah and Sarah taught me the importance of persistence in genealogical research. I had to document the enslaved communities and land speculation efforts for RCN’s children that stretched across various counties throughout Virginia, Kentucky, and New York. Frequent discussions of weavers in factories (in Albemarle, Virginia, and Geneva, New York) made me think of sewing and embroidery taught at the Bray School. Furthermore, various legal and personal papers for Nicholas’ children listed multiple enslaved women named Hannah or Sarah, which further complicated this research.                    

 Reflection

I thoroughly enjoyed this summer internship because it perfectly encapsulated the Bray School Lab’s interdisciplinary nature in highlighting the students’ stories. It was also incredible to work within an extremely supportive environment alongside the Descendant Community, fellow CHIP co-workers, Bray School Lab supervisors, and other institutions. As an African-American man, it felt very gratifying to witness the passion of descendant communities in the Williamsburg area, Charlottesville, and throughout the country using genealogy to uplift our enslaved ancestors as heroes and agents in American history. In particular, engaging with the festivities on Descendants’ Day at James Monroe’s Highland revealed how institutional and descendant collaboration can highlight the importance of storytelling and humanize the experiences of the enslaved.

Tyler Lewis ‘26 is a William & Mary senior, studying history & anthropology. His previous genealogical experience includes researching enslaved communities for The Valentine Museum (Richmond, Virginia) and within his own family (with counties across Southside/Tidewater Virginia and the Carolinas). Tyler is continuing his research on Hannah, Sarah, and Squire this fall semester under the NIAHD Internship in Public History.
 

By Me’Sharlia Fountain

When I first walked into the W&M Bray School Lab, I believed I was entering a history mapping project. But by the end, I discovered I was entering an ongoing conversation, one that thousands of voices, past and present, were waiting for me to join.

June 5, 2025

Today, I walked the corners of history,
not just streets
but threads,
woven by hands I’ll never meet.

Nicole Brown
a voice bridging past and present
led me through more than a building,
through lives lived quietly
but never insignificantly.

The Bray School
not just brick and wood on Nassau and Francis,
but a heartbeat of names,
of Mary, of unnamed others,
of children whose laughter and labor
echo in silence.

I listened.
My thoughts loud,
my voice
small, hidden beneath curiosity and nerves.
Questions swirled,
but my lips held back.

She asked why I, a biology major
was drawn to this internship.
And I smiled,
my voice trembling into the light:
“Even as a pre-med student,
I want to research beyond the body.
I want to understand
how history cradles mental health,
especially in Black lives.”

We walked.
Time folded in on itself.
College courses,
moments of chance,
the sheer fact
that I’m here
all connected,
as if purpose followed me
without me knowing.

We stood in the kitchen
where enslaved children lived,
their names stitched into ledgers,
but not into the stories.
What did they feel?
Were they scared?
Did they dream?

Mrs. Brown said,
“You could walk these streets for 150 days
and still learn something new.”

Perseverance.
A word that sat heavy
but not bitter,
like truth that demands to be held.

Others spoke.
I stayed still.

But silence
though virtuous
isn’t always peace.

So finally, I asked:
“How do we preserve history
in its fullness,
when the voices we seek
were never written down?
And how do we protect today’s truth
for the ones yet to ask?"

She nodded.

Because sometimes,
the most radical question
is the one we were afraid to raise.

Mental health
Unwritten,
Unspoken,
Unhealed.

Even now,
I don’t have all the answers.
But I wonder
about the children of the Bray School,
about me,
about all of us
who carry history in our chests.

Today, I was silent,
then brave.
Curious,
then open.

And today
was amazing.
Intriguing.
Necessary.

Throughout this internship, I’ve realized how silence can be both a barrier and a doorway. Silence holds the weight of stories untold, of mental health struggles unspoken, of histories that linger in the gaps of archives and ledgers. Mental health isn’t a topic often discussed in historical research, especially concerning enslaved Black children, but is an archival marker.

One of the most impactful projects I worked on during my internship was a mapping project with Dr. Maureen Elgersman Lee. The goal was to collect and organize data documenting  the literacy of enslaved Virginians from 1619 to 1865. My task was to research historical accounts, educational efforts like the Bray schools, and any documented individuals or places where literacy was evident, and then compile that data into organized Excel sheets. Each name, each place I found felt like uncovering a small piece of a larger story that’s often overlooked. It made me realize that literacy wasn’t just a skill; it was an act of resistance, a quiet form of empowerment in a time when other enslaved people were actively denied access to education.

Juneteenth Day – June 19, 2025

One of the most unforgettable moments of my internship was attending the Bray School opening on Juneteenth. Being there to witness this historic building’s public unveiling on a day that symbolizes Black freedom and resilience was truly powerful. I felt an overwhelming sense of pride and excitement as I stood among community members, historians, descendants, and my fellow interns, all gathered to honor the lives of the Bray School children whose stories had been hidden for so long. The brief ceremony wasn’t just about opening a building—it was about reclaiming a narrative and giving voice to those who were once silenced. I felt connected to a larger movement of historical truth-telling and healing. Being able to witness that in person was a full-circle moment that I will carry with me forever.

July 3, 202

As I was doing archival work in Swem Library and writing reflection posts for Blackboard, everything started to feel aligned professionally, personally, and spiritually.

One assignment asked me to reflect on my personal and professional values. After discussing it with my Sharpe Advisor, she told me my values are a strong reflection of my character and that compliment really stuck with me. Some people say, “stand on business,” but I believe we need to stand on our values.

I also had a meaningful conversation with my mom that echoed this theme, reminding me again of who I am and what I stand for.

While reading in the archives on Wednesday, I came across a quote by Jonathan Boucher that stopped me in my tracks:

“I learned habits of virtue, and such principles of thinking and acting, as could alone have supported and carried me through the many severe trials to which I have since been exposed.”

This quote captured exactly how I’ve been feeling that my upbringing, my education, and my values have built the foundation I lean on when facing life’s trials. God continues to show me signs, and this moment was a reminder that I’m on the right path.

As my internship draws to a close, I carry with me more than just archival skills or historical knowledge. I carry conviction that research is meaningful when it confronts silence; that history is rich when community is centered; and is rooted in stories we strive to retrieve.

Me’Sharlia Fountain is a rising sophomore at William & Mary, studying biology on the pre-med track. She hopes to do research on the African American community and go on to attend medical school. 

by Terry L. Meyers

The tension, perhaps even ambivalence, always acknowledged in representing the Williamsburg Bray School is the tension between the liberating effect of education for the  scholars and the fact that they were being indoctrinated into a religion underpinning chattel slavery.  But what was slavery actually like, locally?

One of William & Mary’s Seven Wise Men–the seven professors who taught at the College after it reopened in 1888–John Lesslie Hall, lamented in 1907 that Northern historians neglected the “bright side” of slavery—free food, lodging, clothes, medicine, and short working hours. That was a view entertained by W&M students in 1854:

But slavery here in the 19^th century was cruel.

Eliza Baker, born into slavery in 1843 in Williamsburg, recalled the city’s flogging post with an iron cage nearby to hold the enslaved before and after trials. She recounted too the threat of being sold: “some [enslavers] treated ’em right tough, and some right good. They made you do what they wanted you to do, and if you didn’t do what they wanted you to, they put you in their pocket.” She explained, “That means the n—–  trader would get you.”  

She recalled the slave auctions: “from the block on the Court House Green. I have heard many a crying-out.”  The auctioneer (and the overseer of those W&M enslaved), Moses Harrell, “would cry them out. ‘Here they go!’ he would cry. Hardly any parents would stand by to see their children sold.” A slave found with a book could be whipped. If out after 9:00 p.m.: thirty-nine lashes.

Visiting Williamsburg at the end of the Civil War, abolitionist Laura S. Havilland told of the enslaved abused at Kingsmill and of families separated as members were sold south. And she recounted the story of a girl in Yorktown who was punished for going to a night meeting:

for so doing [she] was stripped naked and whipped in the presence of the other slaves, the master himself plying the lash. While she cried for mercy her master replied,

            “I’ll give you mercy.”

            “Good Lord do come and help me.”

            “Yes, I’ll help you” (and kept plying the lash).

            “Do, Lord, come now; if you ha’n’t time send Jesus.”

            “Yes, I’m your Jesus,” retorted the inhuman persecutor, and he continued to ply the lash until thirty strokes were well laid on.

And slavery in the 18^th century was cruel. 

Some accounts are precise but abstract. Robert Carter Nicholas said the enslaved near Williamsburg “are treated by too many of their Owners as so many Beasts of Burden.” Jefferson noted that “the whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.”

Other accounts are more concrete. One by author and abolitionist Thomas Day, likely derived at least in part from the observations of Jefferson’s W&M mentor, William Small, is vivid: Black men and women forced “to labour naked in the sun to the music of whips  and chains,” robbed “of every thing which is now dear to your [whites’] indolence, or necessary to your pleasures,” goaded  “to every species of servile drudgery,” and punished for whites’ “amusement and caprice,” their youth exhausted “in servitude” and finally abandoned in “age to wretchedness and disease.”  

The slave market in Yorktown or Williamsburg is where the newly arrived “surviving wretches”  “are transferred to their conscientious masters—… brought  into the market, naked, weeping, and in chains; —how one man dares to examine his fellow creatures as he would do beasts, and bargain for their persons; —how all the most sacred duties, affections, and feelings of the human heart, are violated and insulted.”

Lawyer and judge St. George Tucker recalled an enslaver near Williamsburg who “always makes it a point of having, what is called, a smart Overseer, whose duty it is to keep them [the enslaved] tightly to their work. That is, the negroes are to be in the fields at the first dawn, of the day, and at their work, as soon as they can see to do any thing, in dark nights, when there is no moonshine; but, when the moon shines the latter part of the night, they must be at work before three O Clock, in summer, and before four in winter. And when the moon shines in the Evening, they are to continue at work until nine a-Clock, except in the Tobacco-season, when they are not dismissed until eleven.”

And when Tucker rose one summer dawn, “looking out of the window [he] saw a negroe woman whose appearance indicated that she was advanced in a state of pregnancy, walking tolerably fast towards the Corn field: she was presently met by her overseer, who gave her at least half a dozen severe stripes over the shoulders by way of quickening her pace.”

Philip Fithian records the viciousness at Nomini Hall about 1773; an overseer “said that whipping of any kind does them [the enslaved] no good, for they will laugh at your greatest Severity; But he told us he had invented two things, and by several experiments had proved their success.—For Sulleness, Obstinacy, or Idleness, says he, Take a Negro, strip him, tie him fast to a post; take then a sharp Curry-Comb, & curry him severely til he is well scrap’d; & call a Boy with some dry Hay, and make the Boy rub him down for several Minutes, then salt him, & unlose him. He will attend to his Business, (said the inhuman Infidel) afterwards!

—But savage Cruelty does not exceed His next diabolical Invention—To get a Secret from a Negro, says he, take the following Method—Lay upon your Floor a large thick plank, having a peg about eighteen Inches long, of hard wood, & very Sharp, on the upper end, fixed fast in the plank—then strip the Negro, tie the Cord to a staple in the Ceiling, so as that his foot may just rest on the sharpened Peg, then turn him briskly round, and you would laugh (said our informer) at the Dexterity of the Negro, while he was relieving his Feet on the sharpen’d Peg!”

Tension? Ambivalence?  Maybe so.

Terry L. Meyers retired from William & Mary as Chancellor Professor, Emeritus, of English after 46 years of teaching. His tenacious curiosity about the Williamsburg Bray School building set in motion events that led to the building’s ultimate rediscovery–and restoration.

by Burnell K. Irby

The house on T Street in Washington, D.C. was the center of family life for many years. Bought by my great-grandmother and her husband, it was a stopping place for family coming from New York and going to Virginia, and a destination for family coming to visit or needing a place to rest while traveling north.

In 1905 my great-grandmother came to Washington, D.C., from Virginia to live with her eldest sister. Their house was three blocks away from the one on T Street. My great-grandmother would live there until she was able to buy her own home.

The house on T Street was purchased about 1922. The woman who owned the house would not allow my great-grandmother to come inside. She had to view another house with a similar layout up the street. When she purchased the house, she paid $2000.00 for it. My great-grandmother put in hardwood flooring, French doors, and wallpaper.  She lived there until her passing in 1977.

Family members continue to live there.

My mother has told me many stories about growing up on T Street in Washington, D.C. In one story, she is walking to the Safeway with her mother. On the way, they would pass a former nightclub at the corner of 14th and T Streets. In those days, it was also a gathering spot for the locals. She was not allowed to walk that way alone.

One evening while walking past the club, her mother stopped and spoke with a blind man holding a cup and a cane. They talked for several minutes. When the conversation was over, they continued on their way to the grocery store. My mother was perplexed about who her mother would know on that corner and asked, “Who was that”? “That is your cousin from Williamsburg,” she was told. My mother could hardly believe that her mother had stopped to talk to anyone, and was even more astounded that he was a relative.

Making contact, keeping lines of communication open, and passing the family story on were characteristics of my grandmother. By the time they got home, my mother knew just whose child he was and who his people were.

I have been told that this was typical of my grandmother.  If she was not taking pictures, she was visiting not only her family, but my grandfather’s family also. She hosted family cookouts on the 4th of July during the summer in Virginia, providing us with  a wonderful picture of family and neighbors.

The house was a brick “row house” with four levels.  While they were growing up my mother says the children were rarely allowed in the living room; it was for holidays and company.  And don’t put your hands on the wall coming down the stairs.

It was from the house on T Street that my grandparents would organize their fight to get my deaf uncle educated in D.C. At the time, he was attending school in Philadelphia.

It would be from here that my great-grandmother would organize the family’s response to the family farm being taken in Magruder, Virginia.

The house in Grove was acquired in James City County in 1943, after the community was evicted from York County to build Camp Peary. It was a 2-bedroom bungalow, with a wood stove and no running water. Every generation of our family has spent summers in Grove staying in the house on Magruder Avenue.

It has enabled family living in Washington to stay connected to family in Williamsburg, to attend family functions from reunions, weddings, funerals and birthday celebrations.

I would hear those and other stories, not realizing the family history behind the stories she was passing on. As I grew older, those places, stories, pictures, and artifacts began to make sense. When a memory was triggered, my mother would share the how, when, and where of its place in family lore. I would say to her, “You need to write it down”—and her response was always, “I just told you.”

Objects I had grown up with and used in my great-grandmother’s houses in D.C. and the Grove area of Williamsburg began to reveal themselves to me. An example of family artifacts coming to life would be two chairs. The story is that they were purchased about 1900 by my great-great-grandparents to celebrate the marriage of one of their daughters.  They were always in the house in Grove. They are another example of household furniture moving from one household to another: they are now in DC.  At 125 years old, I have taken them to school to share with my students. I asked them, “What have these chairs seen?”

Make every effort to support your family’s story with documents and dates. Then put them on a timeline with major events in United States history. What you will begin to see is how your family responded during these national events.

Where was your family during the Civil War? During World War I, the Great Depression, World War II? How did they fair during the Civil Rights Movement?

It gives a broader context and meaning to your family’s journey.

Be patient, this will take time. Some leads will prove to be false; double check names. Names will also be repeated. You will have to visit libraries, historical societies, and museums.

Start with one notebook. There will be more.

A Descendant Community member, Burnell K. Irby is a Howard University graduate, and an educator in Washington, D.C., and Maryland. As a youth, he spent his summers in Williamsburg at his great-grandmother’s house in Grove.

By Nicole Brown

A central part of my career in the last four academic years was my role as Graduate Assistant for the William & Mary Bray School Lab. I have worked on a variety of student-driven digital projects, overseen the review of Williamsburg and Fredericksburg Bray School transcriptions, assisted with general research, and collaborated on descendant engagement. Most often, I served as both a mentor and guide for undergraduates conducting primary-source research associated with the Williamsburg Bray School, the Associates of Dr. Bray, or eighteenth-century Black education in the British Empire. As I move into the next stage of my doctoral studies within the American Studies graduate program at William & Mary, I must transition away from the Bray School Lab and onto other new and exciting projects.

There is something truly special about working on new scholarship with students, descendants, and scholars alike. The collaborations generated via William & Mary’s Office of Strategic Cultural Partnerships are exceptional in the academic world. One such example includes The Williamsburg Bray School: A History Through Records, Reflections, and Rediscovery (The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2024), the book I had the privilege to co-edit alongside Bray School Lab Director Maureen Elgersman Lee. Despite my heartache at leaving my position, there is also much to be thankful for. Chief among those thanks includes the lessons I learned from collaborating and counseling undergraduate students, as well as learning from the many descendants who have shared their knowledge, passion, and insight.  

Learning from the Ancestors and the Elders

“Remember the ancestors” is an adage I hear often repeated by the men and women far wiser than me. The descendants of Bray School students and those whose families (enslaved and free) lived and labored in Williamsburg from the seventeenth century onward always remind me to carry this phrase with me, wherever I go. Collaborating with descendants has taught me that shared authority is not only important, but essential to understanding our past. When museums, universities, and other similar institutions value their own thoughts and ideas about history over the ones shared by descendants, massive swaths of our history are lost – or outright ignored.

Over the years, I have learned that remembering ancestors is not just saying an individual’s name – you must also share how these individuals shaped the world we live in today. Share this knowledge loudly and often, even in spaces where people might prefer you to be silent. I am forever grateful to the many descendants who have taught me that I am part of the collective to remember their ancestors. Their willingness to teach me has foundationally shaped both my PhD dissertation and my life.

Learning from the Next Generation

 One of the best things about working with undergraduates is their unique way of looking at history—especially eighteenth-century history. Early American history often feels static and removed from lived experience. When an event – such as the closing of the Williamsburg Bray School – occurred more than 250 years ago, it can feel impersonal to your daily life. However, undergraduates often have the most innovative perspectives on studying the past because they are willing to grow and learn while studying it, rather than assuming they know everything there is to be derived from eighteenth-century documents, narratives, and events.

One student’s detailed analysis of the 1762 Bray School regulations made me consider this source in new ways. The absence and presence of students in this record became apparent to me through her. Another undergraduate’s ability to consider how hand sewing skills might have influenced the experiences of young Black girls at the Williamsburg Bray School has fundamentally changed the way I write about them. Thanks to her, I take every opportunity to mention what kinds of sewing skills may have been taught at the Bray School. A more recent W&M student shared her unique perspective on walking through a city that has a multilayered past and present. Her ideas reshaped how I conceptualize children walking through eighteenth-century Williamsburg. I cannot walk by the Bray School building without thinking about this student and the quiet wisdom she carries with her on topics such as religion, memory, and history.

What Have I Learned?

Each student I have had the pleasure of studying with in the last four years has taught me valuable lessons. While I have mentored students on how to read eighteenth-century handwriting, contextualize colonial newspapers, or explore the microhistories of Virginia’s colonial capital, they have also taught me how to think anew about the past. To each one of these students, I say: thank you. I am humbled by working with you and working alongside you. If you are any indication of how the next generation of historians will study the past, we are all in excellent company.

Similarly, the descendants who have sat me down to discuss family history, challenge my conception of the America’s founding, or reiterate that I should keep pursuing my research, have reminded me that my passion to study the Williamsburg Bray School is a lifelong journey that cannot be confined by any title or position I may hold. To them I say: thank you. I have learned what resilience truly means from your guidance and love. I promise to honor you, and your ancestors, in my next steps.

The hundreds of hours I have spent working with these teachers, young and old, give me hope for the future. They also remind me that there is always something to be learned from anyone you meet. While ancestors and elders often hold keys to wisdom, so, too, does the next generation. I am excited to hand them the keys; they will unlock doors that neither I nor my contemporaries even thought to open.

Nicole Brown is a PhD candidate in the American Studies Program at William & Mary and a renowned scholar of the history of the Associates of Dr. Bray and of Bray schools in North America. She has served as the William & Mary Bray School Lab Graduate Assistant since the Lab was launched in 2021.

By Dativa Eyembe

Unknown… 

Unknown… 

Unknown… 

Faces we must imagine, names we do not know.  

Hearth stands tall in the center of campus, forcing us to look, to remember. 

But do our fellow students look, do we collectively remember? What do such monuments to history like Hearth and the Bray School mean to us all? 

As Student Thought Partners with the William & Mary Bray School Lab, we are haunted always by the past, as we look to it, remember, transcribe, study. 

We know that voices carry.  

On wind: the flutter of children’s laughter on Nassau Street. 

On time: the echoes of life from centuries ago.  

Both are just as present, all at once, standing in front of the Bray School. 

We question the discreteness of bounds like time and see connections to our own lives in the 18^th century. But are we alone in this? 

W&M Bray School Lab Graduate Assistant Nicole Brown and I hosted the Student Partner Panel to pose these questions and support fellow student thought partners in leading this discussion. 

Home. Community. Historic. 

These touchstones were provided by fellow students for a community word cloud to answer these questions at our Student Thought Partner Panel. Students asserted that the historic is still a reflection of home, and of community, as we know it today. 

Students agreed that various projects in which Student Thought Partners participate at the Bray School Lab – such as the Virginia Gazette Project and the Mapping the Literacy of Enslaved Virginians Project — provide mirrors through which we can see these reflections with real names and moments in people’s lives.  

“It was like their social media.”James McCormack, a Student Thought Partner on the panel, points out cogently about the striking familiarity of these community formations as related to the Virginia Gazette Project. 

This awareness was mirrored by fellow Thought Partners Lee Cox and Erin George, as well as the audience of students on campus who collectively remarked on the importance of seeing these connections to the past. 

For me, the past, and fighting its erasure, is at the heart of my work: as an Africana Studies major and a Student Thought Partner. 

That is to say, that very often I go back and get it – which many will recognize as Sankofa methodology: I look backwards in order to move forward. 

That is because my peers and I understand that everything we know today does not exist in a vacuum; if we want to understand why we are where we are in the present, we need to honestly and intentionally understand our connections to the past. 

This is why when I posed the question to students: 

Is this work important — does it matter? 

The answer was resounding affirmation.  

Students shared that history is often erased, and the William & Mary Bray School Lab helps provide critical remedy. Perhaps most importantly that history is real and relatable because it is made of life.  

Just as real and relatable as the present day. 

Dativa Eyembe is a 3^rd year student majoring in Africana and minoring in Creative Writing. Dativa will be a W&M Scholars Undergraduate Research Experience (WMSURE) Student Fellow next year, and is excited to write as much as possible, whether it be for the Sharp Seminar or her Honors Thesis centering James Baldwin and performance/fiction!

By Lee Cox

Gathering facts from 18th-century newspapers can be like putting together pieces of a puzzle — without the picture on the box. You are not entirely sure what you are looking for or if you even have all the pieces that you need. Every article yields clues, whether it is a runaway notice, a marriage announcement, or an estate dispute. These clues can be pieced together, providing a window into our nation’s history. Specifically, the legacy of Black Americans which is all too often forgotten, neglected, or ignored entirely. Initially, some articles may appear trivial, they can help us trace genealogies, inheritances, and provide insight into 18^th-century social hierarchies.

The Virginia Gazette was a vital source of information and communication in the colony, read by both commoners and members of the colonial elite. From legislative updates to personal notices of births, deaths, and marriages, the documentary source captures a historical snapshot of Williamsburg and the surrounding counties, one issue at a time. Each article I encountered, whether a small advertisement or a lengthy legal battle, offers hints regarding the intersections of family, property, and power.

The Virginia Gazette Project seeks to uncover information within colonial-era newspapers, pertaining to the families known to have sent children to the Williamsburg Bray School. Particularly, it seeks out information that sheds light on the lives and legacies of the individuals enslaved by these families.The scope of my research focuses on the Grymes family, a prominent household, who sent at least one enslaved child named Phillis to the Bray School in 1765.

Through my research, I have encountered references to at least three generations of the Grymes family. This family had a particularly complicated dynamic, as references often appear in the context of estate disputes. They reveal not just who stood to inherit land but also how each person was related, which properties were in question, and who might have owed money to whom. In the 18th century, a short announcement for the sale of an estate could signal major changes in the distribution of land and the movement of enslaved individuals. Reading these articles today allows us to reconstruct which family members were at odds, how wealth changed hands, and the financial consequences of family feuds. Due to the scarcity of records on enslaved individuals, we must use the enslavers as a proxy to uncover the lives of those whose own voices were rarely preserved.

Marriage also featured prominently, showing names like “Sukey” (Susannah) Grymes, who married Nathaniel Burwell. A notice of their union appeared in two editions of the Virginia Gazette on December 3, 1772 (one newspaper published by Alexander Purdie and John Dixon, the other by William Rind). This notice might seem little more than a social tidbit. Yet genealogically, that brief paragraph proves incredibly valuable. It confirms the link between two prominent families, both who had deep political and legal ties, and helps us understand how wealth and power were consolidated through familial alliances. These announcements proved useful as enslaved individuals were often subdivided across households when a new marriage was formed.

Estate sale announcements in the Virginia Gazette can also provide valuable information for genealogical research because they typically include a detailed accounting of property holdings. Because enslaved individuals were usually only recorded as property, such articles can provide records on the size of an enslaved community and the potential separation of families through sale. For example, a notice published on November 7, 1771, details the liquidation of a portion of the family estate by Benjamin Grymes. It details plans to sell approximately 120 enslaved individuals, to cover the estate’s debts. Those enslaved by the Grymes family would suffer the most due to the financial mismanagement of the estate. This sale marked the beginning of a lengthy family dispute, leading to a court injunction forcing Benjamin to relinquish control of the family’s estate. The details found in this series of notices will hopefully prove fruitful to ongoing genealogical research. Details such as the descriptions of specialized skill sets possessed by enslaved individuals, including, carters, forgemen, watermen, and a furnace keeper. Due to the lack of record keeping on the enslaved, these details regarding specialized skill sets can help researchers differentiate individuals that might otherwise be indistinguishable in the historical record. Also, details like the number of enslaved individuals sold and the dates of sale may prove useful when tracing the separation of families.

Among the grimmest documents found in the Gazette are the runaway advertisements, such as Phillip Ludwell’s notice from February 20, 1752, seeking Anthony, a young, enslaved man described as tall, slim, hollow-eyed, and marked by a burn scar on his wrist. These notices typically list the individual’s name, physical appearance, perceived manner of speaking or walking, and sometimes a significant scar or a specialized skillset. These descriptions are characterized by their despicable lack of dignity. From the enslaver’s perspective, these descriptions were intended to help readers recognize a “missing piece of property.” Yet for historians and descendants, each article is a testimony to a real person’s individuality, and the abhorrent reality of American slavery.

Behind every runaway advertisement in the Virginia Gazette stands the story of a real person willing to risk everything for the hope of freedom. These men, women, and children shouldered unimaginable danger, forging passes, braving harsh weather, and constantly eluding the patrols or those eager to claim a reward for their capture. Their quest was not just to escape physical bondage but to seize the most basic human rights: to choose their own paths, to live alongside their loved ones, and to determine their own futures. Though the notices often cast them as mere “property,” their acts of self-liberation shine with undeniable courage. The least we can do is restore a measure of their dignity by recognizing the extraordinary bravery and profound sacrifices they made in pursuit of their humanity.

Of course, this process takes time and is complicated by the lack of uniformity found in these 18th-century publications. References in these articles often vary in spelling, and locations may be referred to by multiple names. The name of an enslaved individual might be spelled differently from one article to another, or an enslaver might fail to mention a wife or child, creating confusion. While the Virginia Gazette rarely offers direct answers, it does provide building blocks for a broader picture. When we compile these articles and organize them by family, these newspaper clippings become a means of illuminating stories long obscured by conventional narratives.

Ultimately, the goal of this research is to rebuild lost connections. In dissecting these sources and assembling their clues, we affirm that every person’s name in the Virginia Gazette has a story worth telling. And while so many of those stories remain only partially recovered, the fragments we do find can guide us toward a deeper, more empathetic understanding of life in 18th-century Virginia. An understanding of our history that recognizes not just the colonial elite, but also the enslaved and marginalized individuals who quietly shaped the world around them.

Lee Cox is currently a Junior majoring in Economics and History and has served as a Student Thought Partner at the W&M Bray School Lab since the fall of 2024.

By Julia Haws

For the past three years, I have been working with other Student Thought Partners at the William & Mary Bray School Lab to transcribe Virginia Gazette records regarding households affiliated with the Williamsburg Bray School.  When we started this project in 2022, our goal was to find and transcribe every mention of a Bray School household in a Gazette from 1760 to 1774, the years of the school’s operation. So far, we have transcribed 649 articles relating to thirty households.  

We began this project hoping to provide a foundation for future genealogical research and to contextualize the lives of Bray School scholars. The Gazette was one of the main ways that information about major events in and beyond Williamsburg spread through the city, and so they give us a window into the conversations and controversies which occurred outside the school. Despite Gazette printer Clementina Rind’s declaration that her paper was “Open to ALL PARTIES, but influenced by NONE,” access to the Gazette was not equal. Enslaved people—including a man named Dick, enslaved by Rind—likely participated in paper’s publication, but it was primarily white Virginians who were able to publish notices and opinions. For this reason, our transcriptions primarily relate to the white men and women who enslaved Bray School scholars. 

Although the articles were written by and for white readers, we can broaden our reading of them by understanding our scholars and their enslavers as part of a network of information and shared spaces in 18^th-century Williamsburg. Reading the Gazette in this context, we can draw on recent calls to shift the narrative of archival silences by reading “against the bias grain” to see those made invisible by the systems of power which governed record production. In his 1984 examination of architecture and racial boundaries on plantations, Dell Upton concluded that the Black and white landscapes “must be read as a whole.” This suggestion has been particularly useful for me in understanding how the news recorded and shaped by the Gazette affected all Williamsburg residents, not only those whose names it recorded.  

Taking this broad approach to the Gazette, we have uncovered a range of interesting and unexpected stories. In 1768, we learn that the Rev. James Horrocks, minister of Bruton Parish Church and President of William & Mary, had been appointed commissary of the Bishop of London. This post placed the already powerful man in charge of Virginia’s Anglican churches. In the 18th century, the Anglicanism was Virginia’s official religion, so this role allowed Horrocks oversight of the religious lives of every Virginian.  

Rev. Horrocks was not the only person affected by his new job. Everyone in his household would have known of and been impacted by his promotion, including Charlotte, a young girl whom he enslaved and who appears on the 1769 Bray School student list. Did Horrocks send her to the school, which was funded by a prominent Anglican charity, to demonstrate his loyalty to the Church of England? Charlotte was not, after all, the only child that he enslaved, but she is the only one known to have attended the Bray School. As she walked to school, she might have met Adam and Fanny, two scholars enslaved by William & Mary, who also appear on the 1769 student list. Was Horrocks involved in the decision to send them to the Bray School? How did the three of them relate their own educational experiences to the mission of the College, an institution supported by their labor?

As part of her lessons at the Bray School, Charlotte might have become familiar with the governing structure of the Church of England, and therefore would have had a solid foundation to understand the controversy which her enslaver soon became involved in. Rev. Horrocks was among a small number of Virginia clergy who ardently supported establishing bishops for the American colonies, a proposal which would have radically changed the experience of religion in the colonies, where churches that had historically enjoyed a measure of freedom and autonomy would come under the direct supervision of a bishop who was no longer an ocean away.   

Rev. Horrocks left Virginia nearly a year before his 1772 death, but notices about his estate’s dispersal provide hints as to how Charlotte’s life in his household and her experiences at the Bray School might have interacted. In August 1772, an advertisement for “a Variety of valuable Books” belonging to the recently deceased commissary appeared in the Gazette. Did Charlotte ever have the opportunity to read these books? If so, what were the conditions under which she was allowed access to them? If not, what was it like to live in constant proximity to interesting and rare books, unable, despite her newly acquired literacy, to explore the stories contained within them?  

Whatever her experience in the Horrocks’ household, it is certain that Charlotte’s life was disrupted in 1772, when news of her enslaver’s death reached the colony. Letters from Rev. Horrocks’ father-in-law Thomas Everard report that the people the Horrocks’ enslaved were “very unwilling to part with their Mistress,” and hoped that Mrs. Horrocks might come to an arrangement with her brother-in-law, Rev. Horrocks’ heir,  allowing her to retain legal ownership of half the people enslaved by her husband, rather than the third she was legally entitled to. After more than a year of uncertainty, it seems that at least some of those enslaved by the Horrocks were sold. It is unclear if Charlotte was among them. If she remained with Mrs. Horrocks, who returned to Virginia after her husband’s death, then it is possible she was able to continue her education during the school’s final months.  

The records of the Horrocks’ household, like most records in the Gazette, provoke more questions than they provide answers. The many stories hinted at in the Gazette’s pages invite our imagination to fill in details to enrich understanding of how the children might have bridged their experiences within and without the school’s walls. What the Virginia Gazette project provides, ultimately, is an invitation to imagine the Bray School scholars as part of the vibrant and rapidly changing landscape of 18^th-century Williamsburg, a world whose breaking news informs conversations today nearly as much as it did 250 years ago.  

Julia Haws is a senior studying History and Religious Studies at William and Mary. She joined the Bray School Lab as a student thought partner in 2022, and has worked on transcriptions of the Virginia Gazette and, during an internship with the Colonial Williamsburg Milliners, on a theorized reconstruction of a Bray School Student’s uniform.