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.  

By Kaiya Downs

Growing up, it was rare to see black faces in my history books. They were there, but often they were a suffering collective, not the grand figures we were shown with the founding fathers or the oft talked about war heroes. Being biracial, it was disheartening to see faces like my own reduced to a blurry sea of faces like a watercolor painting. It did not help that biracial figures within history are often erased entirely or reduced to a footnote. As a result, despite my love for history, it was always distant.  

That distance also stemmed from the nature of academia. When you learn from textbooks, journals, and articles, the history is organized and straightforward; however, there is a vast separation between student and subject that results from it that is inherent to the way it is taught. While this is not wrong and I do not mean to portray it as such, it is an unfortunate side effect that this aids in the distancing between student and subject. Personally, I believe this is why so many of my peers found history to be so dry, as there is much less active engagement compared to other subjects, even math. It is difficult to care about something that you believe does not matter to you or does not require much effort aside from absorbing the information.  

Upon joining the William & Mary Bray School Lab, that distance all but evaporated. Instead of seeing these larger-than-life figures or blurry masses of people, there were lists of names, individual stories of students that attended the school and records of their existence. Instead of textbooks with sparse details and descriptions, more focused on events and leaders, I was met with singular people with their own lives in the minutia of eighteenth-century Williamsburg.  

My position within the Lab is working on the Records Project, where several others and I transcribe letters associated with the Associates of Dr. Bray. The letters that I have transcribed have been between the Associates and ministers stationed in Virginia. While it is disappointing that I have not come across any letters from students at the Bray Schools, the letters still provide me with an interesting insight, as all these men genuinely and wholeheartedly believe in what they are doing. Before joining the Lab, I researched the Williamsburg Bray School and the Associates of Dr. Bray, through which I learned their cause: teaching enslaved persons basic skills while also teaching them Christianity and the belief that God ordained their treatment under their enslavers. When I read about this, I was horrified and disgusted, but that distance was still there. I had wondered to myself how someone could believe these things. The Associates of Dr. Bray became faceless to me, a collective entity instead of individual men advocating for this.  

However, upon reading these letters, some of which mention the slaves these men owned within their letters, it became horrifyingly real. To these men, this was a cause they had to champion and something they felt they were doing out of the “kindness” of their own hearts. It was “God’s will” or a “good deed” or the acts of a “righteous man.” But their letters also detail their travels, their friends, their goals, all things that would not be out of place in an exchange between the average person today.  

This was sobering to me, as it was easy for me to image the Associates as an evil collective that sought to do harm, but no. They were a group of men who thought that what they were doing was right because they genuinely believed what they were saying. They believed that people of color were below them. They believed that what they were doing was God’s will. Not because of some “evil instinct” in them but simply because that was what they believed. As a result, they never paid any attention to it. They never thought to question the effect they were having because they believed they already knew.  

Upon having this realization, I was angry, and it was difficult to walk the brick pathways of Colonial Williamsburg without being reminded of that. However, when thinking about it further, I came to a seemingly obvious realization: they were all human. Everyone, from the Associates to the enslaved people they callously harmed, was a human being. Each of these people had their own lives, families, hopes, and dreams. Instead of blotchy watercolor, each face was defined and put into focus, with individual lives colliding with each other and building these spider webs of connections that we can only hope to find through our research.  

That day, I gained a new appreciation for what we at the Lab do; instead of just viewing the painting, we are the ones helping to restore it. Whenever we read and transcribe a letter, we add more details until we find the finished masterpiece and I will always be grateful for the opportunity to be a part of that. 

Kaiya Downs is currently a sophomore majoring in Classical Studies, with plans to minor in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, and has served as a Student Thought Partner at the W&M Bray School Lab since the fall of 2023.

By Elizabeth Drembus

Aggy, Molly, John Ashby, Isaac Bee.  When I first read their names and the names of 82 other students who attended the Williamsburg Bray School, I was struck that their names had been recorded at all.   

As the genealogist for the William & Mary Bray School Lab, I research the genealogical lines of all known Williamsburg Bray School students along with my colleagues.  Genealogy is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. At a time when there are concerted efforts to minimize and deny the history and legacies of people of African descent, genealogical research is emerging as a tool for reconciliation.  Our project is one of many in progress in the U.S., taking place ahead of the nation’s 250^th anniversary.  The National Archives recently announced their efforts underway to digitize tens of millions of historical records, previously unavailable online.  The Bray School Lab is in good company as we rediscover the students’ stories and recognize and share their contributions to our developing nation to tell a more expansive story of early America. 

Traditional and Reverse Genealogy 

Genealogists traditionally start with the present and work toward the past, with oral history and genealogy placed on equal footing.  We talk with members of the African American community in Williamsburg and beyond, many of whom are conducting their own family history research.  We journey alongside them, examining whether and how they connect to a Bray School student.  We also conduct reverse genealogy.  Starting with the names of the students on the school’s three surviving attendance reports, we work forward to the present tracing the students to their descendants, using a variety of records including — wills and estate inventories, court records, and newspapers.  While many records are available online at Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org, many are not.  In-person research in special collections, libraries, museums, and courthouses is still necessary.   

Records Found and Records that “Should Be There” 

For African Americans – free or enslaved – records were not always created consistently or at all.  For genealogists, this presents an enormous (but not impossible) challenge.  At times I get used to records being there such as William Prentis’s will naming Molly; Peyton Randolph’s estate inventory naming Aggy, Sam and Roger; and Christiana Campbell’s tax entry naming London, Aggy, Shropshire and Sukey.   

Then I am confounded when records that “should be there” are not (records essential to genealogists who do any research), such as John Blair’s estate inventory or tax entries for Harry Ashby.  These are stark reminders of the challenge of looking for people who were intentionally kept out of our nation’s story.   

Aggy’s Daughter, Kitty 

In 1762, seven-year-old Aggy attended the Williamsburg Bray School.  By the time she was twenty, Aggy was the mother of daughters Betsey and Kitty, and son Nathan.  When Peyton Randolph died in 1775, Aggy and her children were bequeathed to his widow – Elizabeth (Harrison) Randolph. Randolph then separated Kitty from Aggy when she gave Kitty to her niece, Elizabeth Harrison.   

Researching enslaved lineages involves tracing the enslavers’ families. To find Kitty, we traced niece Elizabeth Harrison to Surry County, VA, and to Mecklenburg County, VA, through her marriage to Lewis Burwell.  It was thrilling when we saw Kitty with her children – Clarasy, Nathan, and Walter Harrison – in Burwell’s 1803 estate inventory.  Subsequent chancery court records enable us to follow Kitty and her children into the 19^th century, allowing us to reconnect branches of Aggy’s family tree. 

Finding Isaac Bee 

Isaac Bee was among seven children sent to the school by John Blair in 1765.   Prior scholarship highlights Isaac’s escape from Lewis Burwell’s plantation in Mecklenburg County in 1774 and his return.   In 1785, Isaac was called as a witness in a trial concerning a suspected enslaved uprising.  His testimony was not recorded so we do not know what he said.  Soon after the trial, Isaac was sold to David Lambert in Richmond, VA. In February 1793, Isaac Bee was named in a bill of sale between Richard Littlepage and Samuel McCraw, who had jointly purchased Isaac Bee from David Lambert.  In March 1793, Isaac continued to seek freedom for himself, and made a daring escape taking a horse, saddlebags, pistols, and books.  What became of Isaac Bee after this is still unknown. 

The Work Continues 

Genealogical work is painstaking and purposeful; heartbreaking and joyful.  Often the findings raise new questions and urge us to consider new ways of thinking and understanding not just for ourselves but also as a nation.  As we continue the search for descendants, I cannot wait to see what other discoveries and truths are waiting to be found. Come be a part of this work! 

Elizabeth Drembus joined the Office of Strategic Cultural Partnerships as genealogist for the William & Mary Bray School Lab in March 2023.  She is the host of the monthly series Bray School Stories. Recordings of the sessions can be found by visiting the William & Mary Bray School Lab YouTube channel.   

By AJ Bucy

As a Sharpe Community Scholar, I received the significant opportunity to collaborate with the William & Mary Bray School Lab this past spring semester. As part of the growing Sharpe Action Research Pathways (ARP) program, I chose to volunteer as a Student Thought Partner. This is how I first learned about the school while working under Bray School Lab Assistant, Nicole Brown. My role included reviewing and transcribing eighteenth-century documents in relation to the late 1700s school.

The most meaningful work I contributed at this time were my tertiary reviews of the Fredericksburg letters of the Associates of Dr. Bray. I read specific letters and accounts detailing the process of founding another school, used the Transkribus software to transcribe, and afterwards converted each text into Word Document where I then reformatted the letters to be published for the public.

Reading these historical letters not only sharpened my transcription skills, but it also taught me how influential the Williamsburg Bray School was on its “sister” school in Fredericksburg. At the end of the year, I co-presented at the ARP research symposium alongside other Student Thought Partners who worked with the Bray School Lab. I proceeded to inform William & Mary staff and students on the Bray School and the lab’s mission. It was a great opportunity to collaborate with my peers and get the community more informed about the historical school.

Moving forward, I knew my intentions were to use my proficiency in transcribing to continue uncovering unheard voices from the Bray School and further my studies in African American history. So, I applied for the 2024 Charles Center Summer Research Grant to continue my discoveries with the lab. And I wanted to specifically shout out my work with each staff member and share my favorite memories.

With the lab’s genealogist, Elizabeth Drembus, I conducted independent research in the Special Collections of both the Earl Gregg Swem Library and John D. Rockefeller Library. One of my proudest accomplishments as an intern occurred when I analyzed five hundred pages of eighteenth-century documents and letters from household names in Williamsburg: the most prominent being the Blair and Dawson families. The Special Collection folders that I read in Swem Library contained information on enslavers and the enslaved. I took note of those children who could have possibly attended the Bray School at any time over its fourteen years. I also looked at the York City County Project at Rockefeller’s Special Collections, searching through Blair family records in both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The experience taught me how to complete proper documentation of my findings using an Excel Spreadsheet and the basics of genealogy.

With Tonia Merideth, the lab’s oral historian, I learned how to professionally transcribe interviews. From watching videos on the importance of oral history and the rules of American transcription, to finishing first, second, or third pass reviews of interviews, I learned why oral history is one of the most important forms of historical preservation and advocacy. I am grateful to have heard twelve invaluable stories primarily from Bray School descendants and Colonial Williamsburg interpreters.

Throughout this internship I was fortunate to collaborate with the Bray School Lab’s Director, Maureen Elgersman Lee, to build my work schedule and weekly tasks. This experience was unique as I got to have consistent input on what I wanted to accomplish in my research, enabling me to devote myself to the process and lose myself in the work. Additionally, I received the opportunity to table and participate in the third annual Descendants Day at James Monroe’s Highland. As a first-time attendee, I had a truly memorable experience. While there, I was able to learn about and connect with other organizations that also work to uncover the history of descendants in the community. Additionally, it was special to hear about and support Highland’s plans to further help descendants connect with their heritage.

Later in June, I was able to table twice for the Juneteenth holiday. My first tabling experience for Juneteenth was at William & Mary in the Sadler Center. This was special because I got to speak to faculty about the importance of the school and share my developed interest in historical research. The second festivity was in the Williamsburg community where I helped promote the websites and social media platforms of the Bray School Lab to help Williamsburg residents stay connected with the ongoing research.

As a first-year undergraduate student, I am beyond grateful for the opportunity to have this partnership with the W&M Bray School Lab. I plan to continue to foster my academic interest in Africana studies by taking courses in that field this fall.

Even after more than two hundred and fifty years, the buried voices of Bray School students become clearer every day. It has been an honor to be a part of such a remarkable project.

AJ Bucy ’27 is a prospective English and History double major. She is a member of Orchesis Modern Dance Company, CHAARG Women’s Workout Group, and Botany Club, who continues as a 2024-25 Student Thought Partner for the William & Mary Bray School Lab.

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.